In the past few years there have been growing fears of a crisis in online security and fraud.
As more and more of our banking, shopping and information moves online so the demands on digital security increase. In 2016 the FBI described the losses due to cyber crime as ‘staggering’, with over $1billion in that year alone. One in five people (and rising) are victims of online fraud and about half never get their money back, with the average loss being £800.
And it is not just the overall incidence of online fraud, but there are also the associated challenges. I was talking to a friend just this week who was panicking about what she should do with her online passwords. She didn’t want to use the same password across different accounts because that is not safe. She can’t remember lots of different passwords and she doesn’t want to write them down anywhere because that is not safe. But she didn’t want to use computergenerated ones because if someone gets access to her computer they could access everything. So what should she do? I am sure many of us empathise with the dilemma.
