Data Breach Fatigue: Are Americans Too Complacent About Cyber Threats?

 

In this era of technology, data breaches are getting more common but people seem to not really care about them. A survey conducted by All About Cookies shows that data breaches are seeing a big rise in numbers, around 65% of internet users have been notified about their data being compromised in a breach within the past year. Even with all these warnings, the survey of 1,000 American web users shows that they don't care about data breaches and are actually fed up with constantly hearing about them. They simply ignore any data breaches notifications and aren't too worried if their information reaches any third party.

As per the survey, 54% said that they get a notice about data breaches at least once in a month. 46% reported checking whether their personal data is included in the data breach or not after hearing about it. There were also some respondents (50%) that said that they are desensitized about their information being included in a data breach. If people hear that their personal data like bank accounts or private medical records have been breached, they do take action especially when there's doubt about identity theft.

There was a data breach of a health IT company which resulted in data of 11,000 American children being leaked and parents surely got worried about it. 97% of the respondents of the survey also said that they would be worried if their social security numbers got breached. Even though a lot of people may not take serious actions about data breach, some people try to protect their data as well. 57% of the respondents said that they use credit monitoring service to keep their financial data protected. Almost the same amount of people use password managers too so their login details are protected.

There is no sure way to prevent yourselves against data breaches because technology is evolving and so are the methods to steal data. Sometimes people don't even know that their data has been breached which is a serious issue. If you want to check if your data is leaked somewhere, you can check online portals like Have I Been Pwned to make sure your phone number, email or personal information is safe. Not caring about data breaches can do more harm than good so it's better to be safe than sorry.