Malaysians are among the least secure people when it comes to the internet; at least according to a survey by Kaspersky Lab. The cyber security company reported these findings as part of its ‘Digital Literacy Survey’ which covered 18,000 users from across 16 countries.
Respondents were asked to consider eight situations that could be potentially dangerous, but are reasonably common on the internet. These including downloading files, surfing the internet, or simply using social media. They were then given a score based on their responses.
It turns out that Malaysians, along with people from India and Japan, took the most risks. Roughly 23-percent of Malaysians were categorised as unconcerned about their cyber security, especially since 29-percent of Malaysians appearing to not read messages when installing programs.
This was mirrored by about the same number of Malaysian respondents being willing to disable their antivirus solution if it blocks the installation of a program. Kaspersky was not clear if the two were related to each other, but we wouldn’t be surprised if there was a link between no reading messages and disabling antivirus solutions.
Interesting, Malaysians are the safest when dealing with online shopping. All repondents set their antivirus protections to high when online transactions are involved, and most even go as far as to deploy additional protective measures when banking is involved.
These results perhaps provide some insight into the Malaysian psychology. Or perhaps all those stories about online scammers have had a positive effect on Malaysian internet users, and there is some hope for our future.
