Almost 24% of UK consumers have their account hacked

According to data from CertiVox, as consumers continue to head online in their droves to do their Christmas shopping, they expect their details to be secure. However, when asked about the services for which accounts had been hacked, respondents have declared that 25% of the incidents involved Hotmail, 21% involved Facebook and 11% involved Yahoo!, Yahoo! Mail or Y! Mail accounts. Considering a lot of consumers use the same password across a number of websites and many retail websites have customers using email addresses as usernames or allow users to login through Facebook, this will be a worry for online Christmas shoppers. Retail and payment services also featured in the research with 6% of hacking incidents involving PayPal and 4% involving eBay.

Research also unveiled that 25% of respondents have said that they would terminate a service immediately if their account was compromised or data stolen. This is an alarming figure for companies that have experienced breaches and those still relying on the flawed username and password system. In addition to this, around 16% of respondents have also mentioned that that they would look for an alternative service and move if a suitable replacement was found. Only 37% say they would reset their details and carry on using the service as normal.

Results also point out that only 60% of respondents trust the username and password authentication process as a secure way to access online services, 26% don’t trust the process and a further 14% are unsure.

The survey was conducted by Populus among a representative sample of 2,012 UK respondents.