Norton Online Living Report: scary stats for parents; social networking strong

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Saturday, 16 February 2008 15:39

Your IT - Home IT

Symantec’s NOLR report provides details on Internet use in a number of areas across eight countries.

Taken directly from Symantec’s summary of key findings, we’ve seen the results for communication, socialising, living, informing, buying and banking. Here are the details on exploring and protecting:

Exploring:

- Although the majority of online adults and children have received some level of violation (from minor spam emails to major hack attempts) and express concern about online safety, most users do not take enough steps to protect themselves online
- 78 percent of Australian’s surveyed admitted to providing their email addresses to people who are not their friends or acquaintances and 73 percent admitted to providing their name
- Japanese users are the least likely to protect themselves online.

- The majority of online adults are not confident using the Internet without security software
- A quarter of global online adults have shared credit card information with people who are not their friends or acquaintances.
- 34 percent of users in the U.S. have shared credit card information and is the highest number globally, with just 13 percent of users in Brazil divulging this information.

- 27 percent of Australian’s have shared credit card information
-The majority of adult users worldwide have installed security software but few go beyond basic steps such as changing passwords frequently, using multiple email addresses and surfing only on trusted sites

- Germany and Brazil have the highest number of users installing security software with 85 percent each, and Japan and U.S. have the lowest number of security software users at 61 percent and 71 percent
- In Australia, 84 percent have installed security software, 86 percent run frequent virus scans, 42 percent use multiple email addresses, 48 percent only surf trusted sites and 38 percent change their passwords frequently

Protecting:

- Most parents believe the Internet is not as safe for children as for adults and most children believe the Internet is not as safe for themselves as for adults.
- The U.S. and Australia have the highest number of concerned parents at 88 percent and 86 percent while Japan has the lowest at 44 percent

- While the majority of parents recognise online threats to their children, most underestimate the prevalence of these threats and far fewer are taking actionable steps such as setting parental controls
- Many parents and children seem to talk openly about what children are doing online which perhaps relate to their overconfidence in children being protected online. 59 percent of parents in Australia have spoken to their children about practicing safe online habits

- 23 percent of Australian parents don’t know what their kids are looking at online
- One in four children in Australia (27 percent) say they do things online their parents would not approve of
- Parents underestimate how often their children encounter online solicitations and cyber pranks, with the U.S., UK and France having the highest number of underprepared parents

- In Australia, four percent of parents believe their children have been approached online by a stranger, yet 18 percent of children admit to being approached