1 in 10 Brit men has hacked into partner’s accounts to spy on them
Wednesday, February 1st, 2012 at 3:00 pmLondon, Feb 1 (ANI): Be careful when you swap secrets and gossip about your partners with your online friends, it may land you in trouble.
One in 10 British men has hacked into their partner’s online accounts in order to snoop, research shows.
Meanwhile, women are less duplicitous with 6 per cent admitting they do it.
But the victims themselves are to be blame for such ‘cyber hacking’ because it is not the result of high-tech intrusion – but merely due to using passwords that have been left around the house, always using the same one or using a code that is easy to guess.
Birthdays, mothers’ maiden names and telephone numbers are all too easy to hack. The most popular is a mother’s maiden name, with almost 20 per cent using this, revealed insurer esure, which conducted the survey of 1,000 adults.
In fact, more than three quarters of people are put at risk online by using the same password for multiple accounts – including email, social networking sites, online banking and shopping.
And almost half keep passwords written down on paper, stored in their phone or computer.
Again one in seven of those surveyed admits to carrying passwords around.
"The number of passwords needed to navigate modern life is constantly increasing and this has led many Brits to taking serious security risks," the Daily Mail quoted Nikki Sellers, of insurer esure, as saying.
"Writing down passwords is sometimes the only way to avoid forgetting them, but this should then be treated as a highly valuable possession and not carried around or left lying around where it could end up falling into the wrong hands," he stated.
People aged 55 and over are the most careful with bank details, the research added, with 86 per cent regularly checking their statements for fraud. This figure drops to only 59 per cent for people under 25. (ANI)
