Do you know your phishing from you spyware?

4 April 2005 23:49 GMT / By Stuart Miles

According to a new Populus survey - Do you speak geek? Internet users in the UK are baffled and confused by computer jargon.

According to the survey, which asked 1000 adults for AOL UK, common security jargon such as Phishing, rogue dialer, spyware and Trojan was a complete mystery to most people.

More worrying according to the survey over half the people questioned where internet users, however at the same time were unaware as to what the words meant.

The survey also uncovered that while 83 percent of internet users where worried about their personal details falling into the wrong hands 84 per cent of those 83 per cent didn't understand what phishing actually is.

(for those still not in the know - phishing is where you receive an email suggesting that you bank, paypal, or ebay account is in need of refreshing and if you will happily follow a link and enter all your details again - the person at the other end of the website can farm you details and be in your account within seconds)

A quarter of those claiming to know what spyware is were actually unable to identify the correct definition; almost 1 in 10 (9 per cent) guessed it is specialist software to keep an eye on unfaithful partners.

AOL, who commissioned the survey said it would be more than happy to provide worried people with explanations of the common terms used in its survey.

Full tags

Software, Online, AOL, Viruses And Malware