Most online users expect to be protected

Less than half of all net users are looking after their own security, putting the onus on service providers

Less than half of internet users feel they are responsible for their own online safety, with many instead putting the onus on banks or ISPs to protect their web transactions, a new study from the government-led security campaign Get Safe Online has revealed.

According to the research, 16 percent of web users felt banks should be fully responsible for their online protection, while 13 percent argued that this was the responsibility of their internet service provider.

The study also found that 12 percent of respondents had been a victim of internet fraud over the past year, losing an average of £875 each. The most common type of fraud was related to online shopping transactions.

Get Safe Online argued that the amount of web fraud could be reduced by encouraging individuals not to rely on a third party for protection.

“If we all take greater care to protect our personal information online, we can reduce the majority of these criminal activities,” said Tony Neate, managing director of Get Safe Online. “Each one of us has to take greater personal responsibility for our own online security.”

To help increase online safety, 78 percent of respondents thought there should be lessons on the issue at school, while more than half favoured an internet safety test, which would be taken by web users to ensure they were aware of the risks.

Geoff Webb, security product manager at endpoint security specialist FutureSoft, said individuals could do more to improve their own online security. “It’s far easier to compromise a system when a human is involved,” he explained. “Customers are likely to be the vulnerable point as banks will have more protection on their systems.”

But Webb added that the security industry is partly to blame for creating a “barrier of fear” among individuals about web safety. “The security industry talks about specific differentiators and uses very technical terms. We need to do a better job of explaining the fundamentals of security so individuals can understand the issues,” he argued.

Paul Irvine, sales and marketing director of web filtering specialist Bloxx, said that more work needs to be done to improve protection at both the individual and company level.

“At the end of the day, everyone has to take responsibility for their own online activity,” Irvine said. “But often when users have been defrauded it’s where a site has been hacked and credit card details have been stolen, and there’s not much they can do about that.”

Irvine supported the idea of teaching internet safety in schools. “There’s nothing wrong with an online security test, but I’m not sure how many people would actually take it,” he added.