Online Security Trust is Down: US Government Report

A recent survey by the NTIA, under the US Department of Commerce, clearly shows that people in the US have serious online security trust issues. The report was compiled to see how people felt about online security, and it isn’t anywhere near as good as it should.

Looking at the data, I can’t help but wonder how many people are aware of the fact that they can personally improve their online security by using some encryption from a VPN. Regardless, confidence in online security is falling, and this is a major issue.

The online security trust survey’s scope

The survey looked at 41,000 households. While this isn’t an enormous sample size, it should do well with giving us an idea of how people feel about online security trust issues. And the feeling is not good.

One of the question was on whether or not they had not carried out an online transaction due to security concerns. 45%, 18,450 people, admitted that they had not carried out some sort of online transaction due to security concerns.

To extrapolated that out to the entire country: 287 million people use the Internet in the USA right now. 45% of that is around 129 million. Can you imagine the impact 129 million people saying ‘…nah, maybe I won’t buy that’ has on the online economy? It’s enormous.

The scariest stat

The worst thing found in the survey is found in this graph on the percentage of people who had personally had an online security breach:

31% of those with 5 or more devices, that’s a laptop, tablet, and smartphones for the kids, report having an online security breach. The numbers slide down further, 9% for those with one online device, but as we move further into the Internet of Things the number of people with few devices will dwindle. Will the number of people reporting online security breaches also go up? Unless something is done by each and every device owner, like choosing a strongly encrypted VPN like IPVanish, I’d have to say yes.

A statistic which matters

My favorite stat is that 18% are afraid of data collection by the government …a fact which they said right to the government’s face:

For those 18%, are you on a VPN or not? If the NSA wants you, the NSA will get you – if you’re a high enough value target. Short of that a VPN will protect you from everything, and everyone, else. You don’t have to feel helpless. You don’t have to just sit back and take it. You can protect yourself, stop hackers, get ISP spying off your back, and make yourself a very, very difficult target for the government as well with a VPN.

Each online security breach which comes along further impacts people’s trust of online security. This is not the way we want to go. We want to increase online security trust as we become a more connected society, because going backwards is not an option.