A study by Infosecurity Europe has revealed that women are far more liable to give way passwords than men, as long as they are lured into doing so by free chocolate.45 per cent of the women and ten per cent of men happily gave away their personal passwords to total strangers who pretended to be market researchers, using the promise of chocolate as an incentive for them to fill out the probing survey.
While this figure seems to highlight the worryingly high level of women who are willing to give up valuable data to anyone who presents them with confectionary, it should be noted that when a free holiday is thrown into the mix large amounts of both men and women jump at the chance to divulge sensitive information.
“Our researchers also asked for workers names and telephone numbers so that they could be entered into a draw to go to Paris, with this incentive 60% of men and 62% of women gave us their contact information”, said Claire Sellick, event director at Infosecurity Europe.
“That promise of a trip could cost you dear, as once a criminal has your date of birth, name and phone number they are well on the way to carrying out more sophisticated social engineering attacks on you, such as pretending to be from your bank or phone company and extracting more valuable information that can be used in ID theft or fraud.”
“This research shows that it’s pretty simple for a perpetrator to gain access to information that is restricted by having a chat around the coffee machine, getting a temporary job as a PA or pretending to be from the IT department,” continued Sellick. “This type of social engineering technique is often used by hackers targeting a specific organisation with valuable data or assets such as a government department or a bank.”
Advertisement
Related Stories
- Top women in tech celebrated Mar 8th 2011 at 2:38PM
- Gawker hack promps mass password reset Dec 16th 2010 at 3:15AM
- IT industry has largest gender pay gap Aug 20th 2010 at 12:23PM
- Google Mail targeted by scammers Oct 6th 2009 at 2:16PM
- Hotmail passwords posted online Oct 6th 2009 at 9:56AM
- Men influenced by tech-brands more than women Jun 11th 2008 at 11:43AM
- Binatone targets women with new Sat Nav Feb 19th 2008 at 10:37AM
