Kaspersky Lab: Security in the digital environment depends on a number of factors. First of all, it depends on a user's ability to make good decisions. 
The online habits can help protect digital ID cards, money and personal data, but they can often make all of the above easy prey for criminals.
Kaspersky Lab wants to turn user attention to this problem, with one test which helps them to assess their level of knowledge about the digital world and to understand whether their Internet behavior is safe or not.
Internet users often do not recognize a potential threat when faced with it. This is the result of a survey by Kaspersky Lab, with the participation of 18.000 users worldwide.
In the framework of Kaspersky Lab's research, participants are confronted with dangerous situations that occur regularly when surfing the Internet when downloading files or when visiting social networking sites, for example. Each scenario offers the choice of more than one answer. Depending on the possible negative consequences, each score corresponds to a score. The safer the choice of the user, the higher the score and vice versa.
The average score of participants from 16 countries was 95 points, with 150 excellent. This means that they have followed the safe choices just over half of the hypothetical situations. In other cases, they exposed themselves to potentially dangerous situations, such as the leak of confidential information, for example.
In Kaspersky Lab's research, only 24% of respondents were able to recognize a real website without also selecting a phishing (i.e. fake) page. Furthermore, 58% of respondents only chose phishing pages, which are designed to steal information connections, without selecting the original page.
It was also found that in case of a suspicious email, one out of ten users is ready to open the attached file without checking it. This is about the same as manually installing a malicious program on many occasions. Still, a 19% would disable a security solution if it suddenly attempted to prevent installing a program that could be dangerous.
"Self-preservation is an integral part of our existence. In the real world we know how to reduce the risk of losing money or assets. We have learned about it from an early age. In real life situations we are always on guard, but when it comes to the Internet, the instinct of self-preservation does not work in the same way. But today, everything has a digital form: from our personal lives and intellectual property, to our money. So this requires us to be as responsible as we are in real life, because the cost of a mistake online can be just as high. That's why we encourage all Internet users to evolve along with it technology and enhance their knowledge of the digital world",
remarks David Emm, Principal Security Researcher of Kaspersky Lab.
You can scan your device for malware or vulnerabilities with the help of Kaspersky Lab's free tools, which are available at the email address http://free.kaspersky.com.
To "test" the knowledge about the digital world and secure behaviors, you can visit https://blog.kaspersky.com/cyber-savvy-quiz/.
More information and tips for safe online behaviors are available at: https://blog.kaspersky.com/tag/cybersavvy.
