Study finds most people are scared they’ll be hacked, but don’t do much about it

Our attitude toward cybersecurity can pretty much be summed up as fear with a dose of ¯_(ツ)_/¯.

That’s the unfortunate takeaway from a new survey of American’s attitudes about online security put out by the Pew Research Center Thursday morning.

The nonpartisan Washington think tank’s “Americans and Cybersecurity” study of about one thousand U.S. adults found both deep-seated anxiety over the safety of our bits, and widespread hesitancy to use free tools to do something about it.

“If Americans were taking a cybersecurity test right now, we’d be getting maybe a gentleman’s C,” said Pew associate research director Aaron Smith.

Have you been hacked yet?

To spin this survey optimistically, a majority of Americans reported no harm in each individual category of data breach covered in its questions. At worst, 41% had spotted fraudulent purchases on a credit card (yeah, me too), and 35% had received a data-breach notification.

Meanwhile, “only” 16% had an email account taken over without permission, while 13% had a social-media account hijacked in the same way.

But looking at the total picture, including more serious cases of identity theft such as tax-refund fraud (reported by 6%), 64% of respondents had become acquainted with data theft at some level.

Almost half of respondents thought things were getting worse: 49% felt less confident about the security of their personal data than they did five years ago. And even beforeCybersecurity