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Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of consumers say they are unlikely to shop or do business again with a company that had experienced a breach where financial information was stolen, according to a worldwide survey of 5,750 consumers in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom and the U.S.
The survey revealed almost half (49 percent) had the same opinion when it came to data breaches where personal information was stolen.
Nearly six in ten consumers surveyed (59 percent) said they believe that threats to their personal information increases during the festive season, and about two in ten (18 percent) believe that they are likely to be a victim of a breach during the holiday season.
Worryingly, the survey revealed that nearly one-third (31 percent) of respondents have already been affected by a data breach in the past.
“With the increasing number of breaches, I think it’s easy to see why consumers are losing trust in the ability of companies to protect customer data. That is obviously pointed out by the survey,” Jason Hart, vice president and chief technology officer for data protection at Gemalto, told eWEEK. “But the interesting finding is the dichotomy of consumers feeling that business bears the most responsibility in protecting data while admitting that they themselves commit some serious security faux pas by using the same password for most of their online accounts.”
Around four in ten state the most likely causes for being a victim of a breach are visiting a fraudulent website (42 percent), phishing attacks (40 percent), or clicking a fraudulent Web link (37 percent).
The emotional impact of data breaches has also created apprehensive feelings toward businesses with nearly one- fifth of those surveyed (19 percent) feeling they are likely to be a victim of one within twelve months to three years.
Around a quarter (23 percent) of respondents who have been a victim of a data breach, either have, or would, consider taking legal action against the breached company involved in exposing their personal information.
In addition, almost half (49 percent) of respondents said they would take or would consider taking legal action against any of the parties involved in exposing their personal information.
“When security can be seamless integrated into the overall service so that it is not even seen, that would be nirvana. But I don’t think we’ll reach that point any time soon, which means security must be as frictionless as possible,” Hart said. “We have this today with multi-factor authentication, especially when customers log into their accounts and use their mobile phone to receive a one-time password. This is easy and consumers are very comfortable using their mobile phone as an authenticator or identity tool.”