Cybercrime has cost the United Kingdom £1.6 billion in last 12 months

More than one in four (26 percent) of millennials think they aren’t “interesting enough” to be a target of online crime, despite 49 percent experiencing online crime.

Among those who were subject to cybercrime in the past year, more than one in 10 United Kingdom victims indicated their identity was stolen with one in seven saying their financial information had been stolen after shopping online. And 54% thought it more likely their credit card would be stolen online than from their wallet – a consideration when the government is promoting the attractions of a cashless economy.

47% of the respondents reported they had already been affected by cybercrime.

Australians lost an average of 14 hours and $325 per person dealing with the impact of cybercrime.

More than 12 million British consumers fell victim to cybercrime during the past year alone and this has cost the country £1.6 billion.

There is not only a financial cost to cybercrime, though.

63% said they would rather go on a bad date than have to deal with customer service after a security breach. But in reality, most are not passing the most basic requirement of online security: password use. Worryingly, over one in three do not have a password on their smartphone or desktop. Of those sharing passwords, almost one in three (27 percent) share their banking account password, and on average they are sharing passwords for two accounts, with the most common passwords shared being email (55 percent) and social media (38 percent).

People are sharing passwords to online sensitive accounts with friends and family.

According to Pew Research, much higher percentages of younger Internet users have social media accounts, and a GlobalWebIndex report from a year ago showed that millennials are much more active on social media with multiple accounts.

Baby boomers are proving to be more aware about cyber-security than tech-savvy millennials, claims a new Symantec survey.

Symantec director Mark Gorrie said confidence has been compromised following a number of breaches that have exposed the identities of millions of people making routine purchases online. “Our findings demonstrate that people’s trust in online activity has been rattled, yet there is still not widespread adoption of simple protection measures that people should take to safeguard their information online”.

“They are either naive to online security or don’t understand the gravity of the issue”, said David Lee, senior product manager, Norton Mobile Group, part of Symantec, the security software provider which carried out a global survey of 17,125 device users aged 18 plus across 17 countries including 1,000 users from India.