While Americans are “very” seriously concerned about credit card and debit card fraud and identity theft, their overall security concern has decreased, says the most recent Unisys Security Index. The survey found that Americans’ overall security concern has decreased from 147 to 136 in the past year, while concern about national security scored highest on the list with 59 percent of respondents putting “very” as their level of concern, in addition to an increase in concern about financial security.
The survey evaluated respondents’ opinions on four categories of security: financial, national, Internet and personal safety. The respondents were more than 1,000 Americans and concern was measured on a scale ranging from 0 to 300, with 300 being the highest level of perceived concern.
According to the survey, four-fifths of Americans indicated they regularly limit access to personal information on social media sites, yet other opportunities exist for credit card and debit card fraud.
The survey also found that Americans are much more relaxed about reading and complying with company policies (e.g. privacy), using hard to guess Internet passwords, using mobile devices passwords and updating passwords. A large majority (80 percent) of social media users say they regularly limit the personal information posted to social networking websites and also set privacy settings to restrict access to the information. Most Americans also keep their anti-virus software updated (73 percent of those accessing the Internet via computer) and shred sensitive financial and medical documents (67 percent).