Internet users ignorant of privacy issues: NordVPN

High-profile leaks of customer information have not dampened consumers’ trust in the big-name email providers, and awareness of encrypted email services remains low, research from NordVPN indicates.

A survey of over 2000 respondents shows that 36% thought Gmail was the most privacy-focused email provider, followed by Outlook (22%) and Yahoo (14%), although a plurality (43%) didn’t even know how to answer the question.

Respondents were overwhelmingly unable to identify encrypted email providers such as Countermail, ProtonMail and Tutanota.

NordVPN noted that Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo remain among the most popular email service providers even though each have had issues with hacks, data breaches or violations of privacy.

For example, recently news broke that over a million Yahoo and Gmail account details — including usernames, emails and passwords — were being sold online for bitcoin. The high-profile Yahoo data breach of 500 million accounts in 2014 also remains one of the largest online security incidents to date.

Gmail itself hasn’t experienced direct leaks — only those involving user credentials being stolen from other web platforms — but Gmail is one of the most intrusive clients into users’ privacy, NordVPN said.

Over a million Outlook clients were meanwhile hit with a ransomware attack in 2016, and it took Microsoft more than 24 hours to start blocking the infected attachment in response.

“The scale of the breaches regularly experienced by popular email providers raise concerns about how big companies protect their data,” NordVPN CMO Marty Kamden said.

“We at NordVPN try to remind people to put their online security into their own hands: to use strong passwords, encrypted email providers and VPNs.”

The company is also advising privacy-concerned email users to turn on multifactor authentication.

Image courtesy of Lea Latumahina under CC

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