From the Economist:
Internet users in Britain are more likely to fall victim to identity theft than their peers elsewhere in Europe and North America. In a recent survey of 6,000 online shoppers in six countries by PayPal and Ipsos Research, 14% of respondents in Britain said that they have had their identities stolen online, compared with only 3% in Germany. More than half of respondents said that they used personal dates and names as passwords, making it relatively easy for scammers to gain access to accounts. The French are particularly cavalier, with two-thirds using easily guessed passwords and over 80% divulging personal data, such as birthdays, on social-networking sites.
Of course, my identity was stolen (and apparently sold) NOT because of inadequate password hygiene, but just because I was dealing with Countrywide – a company whose computer systems were sufficiently misdesigned to be vulnerable to a large-scale insider attack. So there are a lot of things to fix before we get to a world of trustworthy computing.
