Americans are more worried about identity theft and banking fraud than they are about being the victim of terrorism, suggests new survey data from FICO.
The analytics software provider commissioned an online survey of a representative sample of a thousand US adults in February and March of this year. It found that 44 percent of respondents listed identity theft and banking fraud as their top concern, while only 22 percent listed the prospective deaths of themselves or loved ones, and 18 cited being the victim of a terrorist attack.
That’s not to say that identity fraud is scarier than death, of course; rather, it seems to reflect an acknowledgement of its relative likelihood, with concerns about digital fraud rising as more banking and other sensitive transactions are done online. And when fraud does happen, it can be disastrous not just for the customer but for the organizations affected: FICO’s survey found that of respondents who were dissatisfied with how their banks handled fraud, 25 percent closed the affected account and 12 percent closed all accounts with the bank.
The findings appear to make a pretty good case for the adoption of sophisticated security measures such as biometric login, especially given respondents’ relative lack of concern about the threat of biometric credentials being compromised: While 17 percent of respondents said they were most concerned about biometric data being stolen, the breach of credit card details, bank account information, and Social Security numbers far outweighed that fear, with the latter being listed as top concerns by 58, 76, and 86 percent of respondents, respectively.
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