This has contributed to a much higher online crime rate among millennials, with 31 per cent reporting to have been victims of cybercrime.
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Also, more than half of parents believe online bullying is more likely than physical bullying at school.
The report surveyed more than 1,000 consumers across the United Kingdom and found that many blame cybercrime on foreign countries and governments and are more likely to believe these are the culprits than the global average.
Over the past year, consumers in the United Kingdom lost more than one working day dealing with the fallout from online crime and almost £134 per person on average, totalling an estimated £1.6bn across the nation. And the supposedly digital-savvy younger generation of Millennials (born between 1980 and 2000) engaged in unsafe online habits like password sharing more frequently than the Baby Boomers (born between 1946 and 1964). One in three reportedly felt that security breaches no longer have any real consequences, due to their increasing frequency, while one in five felt like their chances of being compromised by cybercrime is negligible.
44 per cent of United Kingdom consumers have been hit with cybercrime at a few point, with half of those (22 per cent) experiencing it in the past year.
Despite concerns, consumers are highly confident in their online security behaviours.
However, despite widespread nature of cybercrime, the report revealed that many did not take basic security measures to help protect them. “[The] threat of cybercrime hasn’t led to widespread adoption of simple protection measures people should take to safeguard their information online”, said Fran Rosch, executive vice president at Norton. When asked to grade their security practices, they consistently award themselves a solid “A”.
In addition, just 33 per cent of millennials said they always use a secure password – one consisting of at least eight letters, numbers and symbols. Hopefully reports like Norton’s Cybersecurity Insights Report can persuade consumers to take cybersecurity more seriously in the future.
Symantec’s survey breaks down the respondents by generation, and found password sharing to be most prevalent with the younger generations. Millenials are twice as likely to share their passwords and are also less likely to use a secure password in the first place.
In fact, while two out of three Americans say they believed sharing email passwords with friends was more risky than letting friends drive their cars, half let others know their passwords anyway.
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Ironically, two in three believe it is riskier to share their email password with a friend than lend them their auto, yet half of those sharing passwords do just that.
