Security and privacy knowledge is good but bad habits persist
New research from NordVPN finds that people around the world generally have good security and privacy knowledge, but still indulge in bad habits.
NordVPN ranked 21 countries by their performance, placing Germans at the top and -- perhaps surprisingly -- the Japanese at the bottom.
The results are based on NordVPN's National Privacy Test, which assesses knowledge of online privacy and cybersecurity in 48,063 respondents from 192 countries. Three aspects are evaluated: habits, theoretical knowledge, and practical skills to react to threats, with scores out of 100 for each.
The results show a score of 84.2/100 worldwide on how to assess and react to online threats and 72.2 for knowing in theory how to stay safe online. However, actually practicing good security privacy habits scores just 47.1.
The Germans have a good score for online privacy knowledge (78.0), understanding what not to tolerate when faced with online threats (90.2), and maintaining healthy habits online (53.2 percent). Nine out of the top 10 performing countries are European, with the Netherlands being the second best and Switzerland the third.
The US comes fourth with Americans performing best on knowing how to react and what threats not to tolerate online (87.3). They fare less well on knowledge of the tools and principles of online privacy (76.5), and have only slightly better digital habits than the average of the rest of the world (49.7).
The Japanese are the weakest when it comes to digital habits and scored 34.8 points, which is 12.3 points below the global average. Their theoretical knowledge of how to secure online privacy scored 45.3 points, and the awareness of how to react to online privacy threats 57.7 points, with the former being 26.9 points and the latter 26.5 points below the global average.
Daniel Markuson, digital privacy expert at NordVPN says:
The biggest problem we see is the understanding of what does and doesn’t make you private online,
A staggering 49,0 percent of people think that clearing their browsing history would wipe away their digital footprint entirely. And this is the biggest deceit we were made to believe. Tracking and surveillance extend way beyond our devices. Your internet service provider knows everything about your life online.
To be truly private online, one must not only know how to react to threats but also how to prevent them in the first place. Clearing the browsing history will not make you more private, as half of the world thinks. But good habits and comprehensive cybersecurity tools like VPN and an antivirus will.
You can see the full results, and take the test for yourself to see your own score, on the NordVPN site.
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