Mobile users have a false sense of security
when it comes to their devices, according to a recent report from
McAfee.About 70 percent of smartphone owners said they considered their
devices to be safe from cyber-crime, according to a report from the
National Cyber-Security Alliance (NCSA) and McAfee. Even though the
report was primarily consumer-oriented, the findings provide insight
into how mobile users could impact the country's collective digital
infrastructure, McAfee said.No security, no worries A little over 70
percent of the respondents said they had never installed any form of
security software or data protection applications on their device.
Respondents said they considered their device to be safe from data theft
and other cyber-threats.
"Taking extra precautions to protect smart
phones from virus attacks and other threats is not common practice for
US consumers as most feel their devices are safe enough," McAfee
said.The lack of security awareness is a worry, considering that many
employees are using their unprotected devices to access work email, read
files and log in to enterprise applications. The employee may own the
device, but the fact that corporate information may be stored without
any data protection is a security risk.While mobile Internet users may
not worry much about the possibility of their devices being attacked,
data thieves and hackers are continuously evolving their operations to
take advantage of complacent users and exploit software vulnerabilities,
McAfee said.
At the same time, new applications are constantly developed
and released to meet a variety of user needs, and smartphone owners are
downloading more of them. In the past six months, smartphone owners
were most likely to download games (46 percent of the time), followed by
social-networking applications (at 37 percent), according to the McAfee
report.A little over a quarter, or 26 percent, of the smartphone owners
in the survey said they read the developer policy when downloading an
application to determine how the application would use personal
information, McAfee said. Almost half the respondents said they have
removed an application or not installed one over security and safety
concerns.Security worries Of those users who rejected an application
over security concerns, about 71 percent claimed being unsure of what
personal data was being collected and how it would be used was the
primary reason for uninstalling the application, McAfee said.
McAfee
recommended that users "understand" the applications they download, and
review the privacy policy to know what data will be collected and what
services the application can access.Mobile Web use has increased. About
44 percent of the respondents use smartphones to access the Internet for
shopping, surfing or socialising. About 75 percent of the respondents
said they access the Internet more frequently using smartphones than
they did even a year ago.Users should "get savvy" about the public WiFi
hotspots they connect to so that they do not expose themselves to
man-in-the-middle-attacks by cyber-criminals. Even if the user thinks
the hotspot is safe, they should limit the type of application and
Websites being accessed, according to McAfee.McAfee cited statistics
from digital research firm comScore, estimating that nearly 32.5 million
Americans had accessed banking information using their mobile devices
at the end of the 2011 second quarter.A Consumer Reports study found
that 24 percent of users stored computer and banking passwords on their
smartphones and other mobile devices, according to McAfee.Considering
that, if the phone is lost or stolen, anyone can potentially harvest the
data saved on the device, McAfee recommended using strong pass codes to
lock the phone as well as selecting long and strong passwords to secure
accounts.
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