Most people say they care about their online security and privacy. Poll after poll confirm what one would expect: They don’t want their identities stolen, phones hacked, credit cards compromised or bank accounts drained. They don’t welcome government or anyone else conducting surveillance on them, especially in their private lives.
But those polls also show that an alarmingly small percentage of those same people don’t seem to be willing to make much effort to do what they say they want — protect their privacy and security.
One of the more recent, a survey of 2,000 consumers done by Morar Consulting for the VPN provider Hide My Ass!, found that 67 percent of respondents said they wanted extra layers of privacy, but only 16 percent used privacy enhancing browser plug-ins; 13 percent used two-factor authentication; 11 percent used a VPN, 9 percent used email encryption; and 4 percent used anonymity software, such as Tor (the onion router).
