IT security and data protection firm Sophos has undertaken a
social experiment around identity theft and discovered that the
British public are not showing enough care about how they share
their personal information, with most prepared to divulge their
full name, date of birth and email address to complete
strangers.
Sophos marked the end of last week's National Identity Theft
Prevention Week by taking to the streets of Bristol with a video
camera, tricking passers-by into revealing their personal data -
with some disturbing findings.
During filming, all but one person interviewed gave their full
name and an overwhelming majority also happily shared their date of
birth and email address without realising they could be exposing
themselves to an identity thief. In addition, the Vox Pop video
revealed that many people are unaware or have a lack of faith in
organisations' ability to look after their personal data.
The findings are worrying as corporate data leaks risk creating
long-lasting damage to business reputation in the eyes of
consumers.
"We took the unusual step of acting like identity thieves by
using a video camera to find out what people thought of identity
theft. We were mortified by how many people were prepared to share
their personal information with complete strangers. It's clear that
last week's awareness campaign has failed to make much of an impact
on the general public," explained Graham
Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, who conducted
the video interviews. "This is just the tip of the iceberg of a
much larger issue that needs to be addressed beyond an annual
awareness week. Consumers, businesses and organisations all have a
responsibility to constantly look after sensitive information and
not let it fall into the wrong hands. Hopefully this video will
warn other members of the public to be more careful in the future
with their personal data."
Further insight into the Vox Pop experiment can be found at
Graham
Cluley's blog.
150ヶ国で 1億人以上のユーザーが、複雑な脅威やデータ漏えいの阻止に、ソフォス製品を使用しています。ソフォスは、管理・導入・使用が簡単で、総管理コストが業界で最も低い、セキュリティ対策とデータ保護のソリューションに専念しています。ソフォスでは、グローバルに展開する脅威解析センター、SophosLabs の支援を受けて、暗号化、エンドポイントセキュリティ、Web、電子メール、ネットワークアクセス コントロールなど、評価の高い製品を提供しています。20年以上にわたる経験を持つソフォスは、セキュリティおよびデータ保護の業界リーダーとして第一級のアナリスト団体から高い評価を受け、多くの受賞歴を誇ります。