Some 89pc of consumers regard preserving personal data as extremely important, yet over 45pc of users have suffered at least one form of data loss within the past five years. That is according to a recent survey conducted by B2B International, with IT security firm Kaspersky Lab
Results from the survey revealed that hardware faults are the most frequent reasons for data loss, as reported by 22pc of respondents. This was followed by malware infection, with 13pc of consumers losing sensitive data as a result of a malicious program – a figure which rose to 20pc in regions such as South-East Asia.
User error was also to blame for data loss, including accidental deletion of data (11pc), and physical damage to a computer or a laptop (5pc). Meanwhile, 3pc of consumers ran the risk of their personal data falling into the wrong hands when their computer was lost or stolen. The survey also indicated that users want to store information on their computers for several years. Despite 59pc of respondents buying their current PC within the last two years, most of them use external hard drives to preserve and transfer older information. Even with the high frequency of data loss, 11pc of users have information from more than 10 years ago stored on their computers, and 41pc have files dating back three to 10 years. Only 6pc of users try to purge files that are more than six months old.
