{"id":297384,"date":"2019-02-05T11:32:28","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T09:32:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=297384"},"modified":"2019-02-05T11:32:28","modified_gmt":"2019-02-05T09:32:28","slug":"24-of-south-africans-say-they-have-fallen-for-online-scams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/297384\/24-of-south-africans-say-they-have-fallen-for-online-scams\/","title":{"rendered":"24% of South Africans say they have fallen for online scams"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>YouGov has released the results of a new study which shows how South Africans are not doing enough to safeguard themselves online.<\/p>\n<p>Commissioned by Google and conducted amongst 1,005 internet users in the country, the study was undertaken between 27 December 2018 &#8211; 10 January 2019.<\/p>\n<p>It shows that 53% of respondents have received phishing emails from people imitating legitimate sources in order to fraudulently gain access to their personal information, including passwords and bank details.<\/p>\n<p>Another 24% of South African internet users admit to having fallen victim to online scams in which they ended up making upfront payment for a product or service that did not exist.<\/p>\n<p>Other major findings from the report include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>More than a quarter (28%) of respondents have had someone gain unauthorised access to their social media and\/or email accounts;<\/li>\n<li>65% of South Africans are concerned about protecting their financial information (like banking details) online;<\/li>\n<li>43% of South Africans use the same password for most or all of their online services;<\/li>\n<li>Only 34% of South Africans use 2-step verification for all their online accounts;<\/li>\n<li>A total of 11% of South Africans have no recovery phone number or email address for their online accounts;<\/li>\n<li>21% of South Africans update their online passwords less frequently than once every 6 months;<\/li>\n<li>26% of South Africans never use tools like Google Security Check-Up to review their security settings.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8220;This research shows that South Africans are well aware of the dangers that present themselves online, yet so few are proactively using tools available to protect them from online predators,&#8221; said Fortune Mgwili-Sibanda who heads up Public Policy and Government Relations at Google South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This Safer Internet Day, we want to encourage South Africans to take their online safety more seriously and educate themselves on the tools available out there,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong> Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/296752\/these-are-the-biggest-social-media-and-chat-platforms-in-2019\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">These are the biggest social media and chat platforms in 2019<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>YouGov has released the results of a study which shows how South Africans are not doing enough to safeguard themselves online.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":239113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[53,26,9032],"class_list":["post-297384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-google","tag-headline","tag-yougov"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297384"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":297396,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297384\/revisions\/297396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}