12M Britons have fallen for online scams

Despite losing life savings, identity, passwords, or photos, Britons don’t take enough precautions to protect themselves online.

One in five Brits has fallen victim to an online scam, losing 1.3 billion pounds to fraud over time in total, cybersecurity firm F-Secure said.

As per the company’s report, Britons spend eight hours online daily, exposing themselves to the threat of online crime, phishing emails, fake payment websites, and Authorised Push Payment (APP) frauds.

“Despite many Britons often feeling unsafe online, they still aren’t putting adequate security measures in place. In the physical world, you wouldn’t willingly give out passwords and personal data to strangers, so why go online and do it and risk being a target for online criminals?” said Timo Laaksonen, CEO of F-Secure.

What do people do online? Outside of work, studies, calls, messages, and finances, Britons often read the news and check the weather, lose themselves in social media, stream videos or music, and play games, among other things.

“Digital services are inseparable from our daily lives. The data we create from living profoundly digital lives helps explain why most people say that what’s on their phone is worth more than the phone itself. Our report found that when weighing up which they would rather have stolen, 58% of Britons said they would prefer thieves swiped their car than nicked their identity,” said Laura Kankaala, threat intelligence lead at F-Secure.

Four in ten UK adults said they would rather “have their hands in a nest of vicious bullet ants than lose their personal data”.

Britons admitted they would hate to lose photos the most, since one-third of them have over 1,000 pictures on their phones. Of those, one in ten have up to 10,000 images, yet many don’t back them up.

Four in ten UK adults said they would rather “have their hands in a nest of vicious bullet ants than lose their personal data”.Britons admitted they would hate to lose photos the most, since one-third of them have over 1,000 pictures on their phones. Of those, one in ten have up to 10,000 images, yet many don’t back them up.Three-quarters of Britons claimed they could spot a potential scam a mile away. However, people still feel like they don’t know who to trust online and are especially worried about their families’ safety online.