It is hard to fathom but more than 1/10 of PC users in the United States are completely unaware of whether they have a firewall or even antivirus software in place, and more alarming is that nearly 3/5 of users did not have any privacy software installed. And when asked about privacy settings, more than half (52 percent) simply admitted they didn’t know.
These were the findings of a survey conducted by Steganos, a provider of privacy software to more than two million consumers and SMEs worldwide, found a distressingly high number of users simply didn’t know what software was running on their computers in
the form of protection from snooping eyes, hackers, malware, spyware or viruses.
13 % said they did not have any form of antivirus protection installed
9 % did not know if antivirus was installed
19 % said they did not know if they had firewalls in place
60 % did not have privacy software installed
25 % did not know whether they had privacy software or not
46 % said they thought they had adequate protection for their online data and security
“When you consider the alarming number of threats facing computer users today, and our reliance on the data we keep on our computers, the results of this survey are shocking,” said Michael Marzy, managing director for Steganos. “As a company we work tirelessly to promote good practices and means for users to keep their personal and business information safe as they access the Internet, and to protect their privacy. To find that consumers don't even know what software they are using strongly suggests that as an industry we need to keep educating users.”
Despite these alarming numbers, there is good news about consumer awareness the survey finds. A large number of consumers are very aware of the
online dangers and have installed antivirus, anti-spam, firewall and various privacy software applications. There are even a number of users who admitted in the survey that they are using encryption software.
Of course even with all those applications in place, the software needs to be running and most importantly up to date.