Consumers Value Their Social Media But Put Security Onus On Companies

Social media has taken on a life of its own — so much so that a new survey finds a lot of consumers value their life online at $100,000 to priceless. What’s more, 55 percent of survey respondents that partook in the Consumer Account Security Report 2016 put out by TeleSign said they place the responsibility of cybersecurity on businesses for their online and mobile accounts.

That may be particularly scary since Forbes reported that Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook got his social media accounts hacked for the third time in 2016. According to the Forbes report, OurMine, the hacking group, claimed credit for hacking into Zuckerberg’s Pinterest account. In June, OurMine hacked his Twitter and Pinterest accounts. In the June hack, reusing a password was to blame for the infiltration. This time, ZDNet’s Zack Whittaker said the hacking group found a vulnerability on Pinterest that let them hijack his account and change his profile, posting, “Don’t worry, we are just testing your security” and including a link to the website of OurMine.

The hack of Zuckerberg should be a wakeup call to social media users that they have to be careful and not blindly accept that businesses will protect their data.

“When you consider what comprises an online life — email, banking and social media accounts, personal information, photos and more — these assets are extremely valuable, even ‘priceless’ as some reported,” said Aled Miles, TeleSign CEO, in a press release highlighting the results of the survey. “With the majority of consumers looking to businesses to keep them safe online, companies need to prioritize providing strong account security or risk losing valuable users. In fact, our report shows one in three victims of account compromise stopped doing business with the impacted brand.”

The survey also found that 51 percent of survey respondents said they had a security issue during the past year, including getting an account hacked, a password stolen or their information compromised. And just like what happened to Zuckerberg in June, password reuse was one of the reasons.