Researches that were claiming to be conducting a "survey" claimed to require a birthdate as proof the survey was conducted and were offering a chocolate bar as a reward for taking place in the survey.

Women were four times more likely than men to give out the required information and complete the survey.  Among other information required were commonly used computer passwords and if the people knew passwords that colleuges used.

According to NetworkWorld, Only 10% of men were willing to give up their information compared with 45% of women.  A chocolate bar just isn’t worth it; no price is.

But a lot more work has to be done as the average office worker is still willing to spill a great deal of information.

"This year’s survey results were significantly better than previous years. In 2007 64% of people were prepared to give away their passwords for a chocolate bar, this year it had dropped to just 21% so at last the message is getting through to be more infosecurity savvy. The researchers also asked the office workers for their dates of birth to validate that they had carried out the survey; here the workers were very naïve with 61% revealing their date of birth. Another slightly worrying fact discovered by researchers is that over half of people questioned use the same password for everything (e.g. work, banking, web, etc.)"

That’s not even the worst of it.  People were willing to give up password information over the phone if someone called claiming to be from the IT department.  Yeah, real smart.  I’m just going to take your cookie away, right now.

Related:

Entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 9:33 am under Internet, Security, Uncategorized.

Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
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