South Africans are scarily happy to give out their passwords

The people of South Africa have a long way to go when it comes to being truly cyber-savvy. That much is made obvious by a new report from Kaspersky which suggest that South Africans are far more willing to give out their passwords than they should be.

According to Kaspersky, 42% of internet users in South Africa admit having shared their passwords with somebody or left them visible for people to see.

The data, which comes from the most recent round of consumer surveys conducted by the Russian security giant also shows that respondents were more likely to think strong passwords were necessary for the online services they valued most highly. The studies found that according to South African consumers the sites most in need of strong passwords were online banking (69%), email (51%) and social media sites (32%). The list of the top three most important applications was almost identical, at 68% for online banking, 49% for email and 21% for social media sites.

Consumers also believe that online shopping and payment applications require strong passwords, but don’t place the same value on these sites. Locally, just 16% considered online shopping to be a personally important service, although 24% felt it warranted a strong password. In addition, 34% agreed that online payment systems needed a strong password, with slightly fewer 25% regarding these services as personally valuable.

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Perhaps most concerning though is that nearly over a quarter (29%) think there is no need to have additional protection for their personal credentials when using online financial services. Rather than taking responsibility for their own security, they expect the brands they shop with to take care of it for them.

As we’ve already noted, South Africans are pretty free and loose when it comes to giving out their password too. A third (33%) of internet users locally also admit to freely sharing passwords with family members. 42% have both shared passwords and left them visible to others. One in ten (11%) share passwords with friends and a surprising 8% with colleagues. And, with over a third (38%) of consumers using only one email address for all of their needs, sharing that password with others could prove costly. Should it get into the wrong hands, this password could unlock all information stored on that email address.

“Consumers need to be more cyber-savvy about passwords,” says David Emm, Principal Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab. “Once shared, it is very difficult to know exactly where your password will end up. Our research shows that there is a real disconnect between the understanding of why we need strong passwords and the action people take to keep them safe. No one would expect a friend or family member to knowingly divulge a password, but by sharing passwords, consumers are increasing the risk of them falling into the wrong hands. This could give cybercriminals easy access to personal and financial information and hacked accounts can be used to distribute malicious links and files, harming others. At worst, entire identities could be put at risk. Even the most complex password is weak if it’s visible to others, so keep it to yourself”.