5.5m US households experience identity theft each year

 "New consumer research from Parks Associates finds 5% of US broadband households annually experience identity theft, which equates to 5.5 million households affected and at least 6.6 million people. Identity theft ranks as the top data security or privacy concern, cited by over half of all US broadband households."

Source:  Parks Associates, 30th September 2020

More than 50% of the traffic on the internet is encrypted

"In the Global Internet Phenomena report that will be released tomorrow, we give a conservative number that "more than 50% of the traffic on the internet is encrypted." In reality, the number is probably closer to 75-90% of the overall traffic, since some applications "usually" encrypt their data."
Source:  Blog post by Sandvine, 1st October 2018
Also in the report -
"In the biggest teaser/reveal so far for the upcoming Global Internet Phenomena Report, Sandvine can reveal that Netflix is the #1 downstream application worldwide with almost 15% of global internet traffic."
Source:  Blog post by Sandvine, 28th September 2018

Two thirds of internet users are more concerned about online privacy than they were a year ago

"The CIGI-Ipsos Global Survey on Internet Security and Trust, undertaken by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and conducted by global research company Ipsos, reached 23,376 Internet users in 24 countries, and was carried out between October 7, 2014 and November 12, 2014.
The countries included: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey and the United States.
The survey found that:
83% of users believe that affordable access to the Internet should be a basic human right;
two thirds (64%) of users are more concerned today about online privacy than they were compared to one year ago; and,
when given a choice of various governance sources to effectively run the world-wide Internet, a majority (57%) chose the multi-stakeholder option—a “combined body of technology companies, engineers, non-governmental organizations and institutions that represent the interests and will of ordinary citizens, and governments.”
The global Survey was developed to help support the work of the Global Commission on Internet Governance (GCIG). The GCIC, an initiative by CIGI and Chatham House, was established to articulate and advance a strategic vision for the future of Internet governance."

Source:  CIGI-Ipsos Global Survey on Internet Security and Trust, January 2015

Note - Click on the link to see lots more stats and charts in the full doc.

Sales of George Orwell's 1984 rose 6,000% following the Edward Snowden revelations

"Sales of George Orwell's 1984 have shot up following revelations that the United States' National Security Agency (NSA) is accessing data on people around the world.
Sales of Orwell's novel have risen by 6,000% since the Guardian revealed the allegations of former NSA sub-contractor Edward Snowden.
In the dystopian novel, all citizens are constantly spied on by an inner elite party in the government.
Banners reading "Big Brother Is Watching You" cover the city and citizens are monitored by the Thought Police, who punish people for independent thinking.
After Snowden leaked the top secret files relating to the Washington's highly confidential Prism programme, questions have been raised about the ethical implications of the surveillance."

Source:  International Business Times, 11th June 2013

Note - Clearly if we don't know what they rose from and to, and over what time period, (how many copies would it sell normally), which countries this covers, and what other activity was happening (new editions, promotions) it's a bit of a suspect stat.  #CaveatEmptor

American teens, social media & privacy

"Teens are sharing more information about themselves on social media sites than they have in the past, but they are also taking a variety of technical and non-technical steps to manage the privacy of that information. Despite taking these privacy-protective actions, teen social media users do not express a high level of concern about third-parties (such as businesses or advertisers) accessing their data; just 9% say they are “very” concerned.
Key findings include:
Teens are sharing more information about themselves on their social media profiles than they did when we last surveyed in 2006:
91% post a photo of themselves, up from 79% in 2006.
71% post their school name, up from 49%.
71% post the city or town where they live, up from 61%.
53% post their email address, up from 29%.
20% post their cell phone number, up from 2%."

Source:  Pew Internet & American Life Project, 21st May 2013

Nearly 11% of 4 digit passwords are '1234'

"I was able to find almost 3.4 million four digit passwords. Every single one of the of the 10,000 combinations of digits from 0000 through to 9999 were represented in the dataset.
The most popular password is  1234  …
… it’s staggering how popular this password appears to be. Utterly staggering at the lack of imagination …
… nearly 11% of the 3.4 million passwords are  1234  !!!"

Source:  DataGenetics, September 2012

Data:  "By combining the exposed password databases I’ve encountered [from leaks], and filtering the results to just those rows that are exactly four digits long [0-9] the output is a database of all the four digit character combinations that people have used as their account passwords.

Given that users have a free choice for their password, if users select a four digit password to their online account, it’s not a stretch to use this as a proxy for four digit PIN codes."

The average Briton has 26 online accounts, but only uses 5 passwords

"The average Briton now has 26 online accounts, yet uses just five passwords to keep them secure.
Remembering a huge number of different passwords is simply impossible for most of us.
But using the same password, for instance, across an email account and an online banking account can leave people terrifyingly vulnerable to hackers.
New research out on Monday revealed the spiralling number of internet accounts is behind a dramatic rise in online fraud.
Fraudsters in the UK illegally traded more than 12 million pieces of personal information online in the first four months of 2012 alone.
Figures from credit checkers Experian says online fraud has increased three fold since 2010, when 9.5 million pieces of information were traded illegally.
Online accounts cover everything from banking to utility bills to social networks, with 25 to 34-year-olds signing up to an average 40 accounts.
The number is set to grow, with nearly one in five people (17%) signing up to six or more new accounts every month.
One in four of the 2,000 people quizzed use a single password for the majority of accounts and one in 20 (four per cent) sticking with the same login details for all their accounts.
Experian says people are putting themselves further at risk by no longer using many of their accounts - meaning passwords are not changed regularly.
Six in 10 adults (66 per cent) admit to having defunct profiles that hold valuable personal and financial information, including social network profiles (26 per cent), email addresses (18 per cent) and shopping accounts (21 per cent)."

Source:  Daily Mail, 16th July 2012

Two thirds of cookies on sites are from third parties

"As UK companies scramble to comply with new laws requiring them to disclose and get permission for all the cookies they use, a new study has found that more than two thirds of all the bits of tracker code on websites are from third parties. Which means they are essentially for delivering targeted advertising or analysing behaviour across the website."

Source:  Data from Truste, reported by the Financial Times, 18th April 2012

'Up to' 70% of UK smartphone users have never looked at the terms & conditions of their apps

"Companies including Facebook and Apple are gaining access to swathes of private data from individuals who agree to the terms and conditions when they download an app.
But according to a poll, up to 70 per cent of smart phone users never read such terms and conditions, leaving personal information, including text messages, their location and contacts, unwittingly exposed.
An investigation by the Sunday Times found that the data accessed via apps is often transmitted to “third party” companies, including advertisers."

Source:  Daily Telegraph, 26th February 2012

(The Sunday Times is behind a paywall, so I can't link to the original)

45% of American 12 year olds have a profile on a social network

"Social networks like Facebook and MySpace are supposed to be limited to people who are ages 13 and up, but this is far from being the case, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which found that nearly half of American 12-year-olds -- 45% -- have profiles on these sites. Assuming the 12-year-old population has remained stable, around 3.96 million since the latest Census projections in 2009, that means 1.78 million 12-year-olds are evading Facebook’s age limits.
These figures, while large, don’t come as much of a surprise following an earlier estimate from Consumer Reports that 7.5 million children under the age of 13 are on Facebook, including five million children under the age of 10. And they’re in line with separate data from Harris Interactive, which found that half of parents with 12-year-olds know that their children are on Facebook. What’s more, seven out of ten of these parents actually actively helped their children evade the security protocols meant to prevent anyone from under age 13 getting on the site."
Source:  Mediapost, 25th November 2011

The top 50 passwords used by Gawker readers

Click to enlarge

Source:  WSJ blog, 13th December 2010
Note - Data comes from hackers who were able to access the site and extract the passwords.
Passwords in red are the names of Gawker sites - e.g. people were using the name of the site as their password

The ten most commonly used passwords

"1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou [i.e. the name of the site the user is accessing]
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123"
Source: Data compiled from 32m passwords leaked from the company RockYou, analysed by Imperva, and reported by The Guardian, 21st January 2010

68 Percent of Saudi girls drop their last name on Facebook

"Dammam, Asharq Al-Awsat - Are you on Facebook under your real name? This is the question that continues to haunt a large number of Saudi Arabian women, despite the fact that internet social networking sites rely primarily on factual personal information. However a recent study carried out in Saudi Arabia shows that 68 percent of Saudi girls prefer to withhold their family name due to the sensitivity of this information, in comparison to just 32 percent of girls who appear on Facebook under their own full names. The study revealed that 16 percent of girls polled were members of Facebook under aliases or false identities. As for the Saudi Arabian boys who use Facebook, the study showed that 60 percent of those questioned were members of Facebook under their own full name, with just 4 percent appearing under an alias or a false name."
Source: Asharq Alawsat, 19th January 2010