Every year, I do an “I’m thankful story,” where I take something that happened in tech in the past nine months and put a humorous spin on it. It’s generally a fun story to write. Last year mine was called, “I’m thankful for all of the nude photo leaks,” a reference to both the Apple hack that gave the world a eyeful of Jennifer Lawrence (among other Hollywood starlets) and then the Snapchat hacking, which resulted in the release of a bunch of naked pictures of a lot of non-famous people.
“I’m thankful because there’s nothing like having naked images of yourself being shared among strangers to maybe, just maybe, make people start to really take their own security more seriously and for them to start to be much more careful about what they store on their phones,” I said at the time.
A year later, a new survey out from Avast shows that I couldn’t have been more wrong.
In one the key takeaways, the 25,000 people who participated in the survey were asked whether they’d rather have someone steal their nude photos, or steal their bank account information, off of their phone. Not only did participants from every single country choose nude photos, in many countries it was not even close.
For such an uptight country, it’s kind of surprising that only 23 percent would choose to have their bank account information taken. It hovered around 28 percent for the U.K. and Germany, and 33 percent in France. Aren’t the French known for being much freer about that sort of stuff?
It was our neighbors to the south that had the most people say they’d rather someone took their bank info, with 47 percent in Mexico and Brazil, and almost 49 percent in Argentina.
Maybe that is an unfair question, since having our financial information stolen is maybe the worst thing that can happen to you. Still, I would have expected the numbers to be closer.
Perhaps the reason for those answers is that a surprisingly high number of people have already had that happen to them. Another part of the survey asked if respondents ever had someone stumble across private/personal information on their phone and to select all that applied to them
Indians are affected most, by this with only 40.9 percent saying that it hasn’t happened that someone stumbled across private/personal information on their phone.8.8 percent have had someone accidentally see their partner naked, or barely dressed, as opposed to 4.2 percent in the U.S. 16.1 percent of Indians have had someone see the naked or undressed, compared to 4.1 percent of U.S. respondents.
I think people who live in India need to figure out how to password protect their phones. Seriously.
Overall, most often smartphone users have had someone stumble across intimate text messages. In the U.S., 7.9 percent said that someone had seen an intimate text with their partner; in Mexico and India that number was over 17 percent.
When it came to the financial information, minors were the least concerned about their financial information being accessed, probably because they don’t have any money. Globally, only 11.73 percent listed financial information as most painful to be accessed. The biggest fear for this age group is someone accessing their SMS/chat messages, with 21.85 percent, or their photos or videos, with 19.15 percent.
There was another interesting part of the survey, where it asked who the first person the responders would be the person they least want accessing their phone.
In France, more than half of smartphone users, 58.85 percent, ranked their mom first as the person they don’t want to access their phone, which is pretty hilarious. The same was true of more than 40 percent of those in India and Brazil.
Barely anyone said their spouse because, seriously, if that’s the case then you have a terrible relationship and you should stop doing things you don’t want your significant other to see. Russia and India topped that one, both with over 6 percent.
Fewer people than you’d expect picked the government, even in places where the government is most surely spying on you, like Russia. Only one country, Mexico, had over 12 percent choose this option first.
The vast majority, wisely, are afraid of cyber criminals. That number is around 64 percent for the U.K. and the U.S., 60 percent for the Czech Republic and over 53 percent for Germany. No country has less than 20 percent respond this way.
(Image source: huffingtonpost.co.uk)
