ESET has conducted a survey on social media of smartphone usage ahead of the Mobile World Congress with interesting conclusions: 9.7% of those surveyed users had their phone lost or stolen in the last 12 months, slightly more than 29% do not lock their smartphone, and almost 20% do not backup the content of their smartphone at all.
Last year ESET observed a record number of threats for Android platform – including the first ever file encrypting ransomware for mobile devices. The aim of this survey of around five hundred smartphone users on social media (conducted in February 2015) was to gather data on mobile security.
To protect against any loss of content it is recommended to regularly back up the data stored on a smartphone. Based on ESET’s survey 19.7% of users do not actually back up data at all and 35.7% only do so sometimes, 14.7% do so daily, 19.9% weekly and 10% monthly.
One of the best protection tools against physical breaches of phones is locking the device (security software with Anti-Theft can help locate it as well). However, 29.3 percent do not lock the phone or screen against unwanted access at all, while the majority of those that do – 55.3% – do so with a PIN number, 12.5% use fingerprint and 3% use face detector.
In January, ESET Ireland has surveyed a thousand Irish computer and mobile users, whether they have ever texted or uploaded a photo of themselves, which would cause them embarrassment if it was made public. 70% of those surveyed in the age group 16-24 have uploaded or texted their embarrassing pictures. The age group 25-34 was just a tiny bit better with 62%, then the numbers slowly decrease down to 14% of those over 55. You can read the full report here.
About ESET Ireland
ESET Ireland will keep your hardware and software performing as it should. The company has hundreds of people around the world working hard every day so customers’ computers, tablets, smartphones and servers are properly protected. All with minimal impact on their performance.
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