The wave of successful cyber attacks that hit U.S. retailers over the last 12 months has drawn broad attention to the failings of traditional security methodologies, but such individual incidents – however far reaching – don’t necessarily reflect the full scope of the privacy problem facing consumers today. The results of the latest poll from RSA the Ponemon Institute should therefore come as little surprise.

Of the more than 1,000 individuals who participated in the landmark study, nearly half said that they have had personal information compromised on at least one occasion. Equally alarming is that 45 percent of the participants admitted they may not be aware of every instance they were hacked, suggesting the real portion of the population to have fallen victim to data breaches is much higher than that expressed in the report.

The exposure of so many people to hackers has contributed to a heightened level of public concern online, with 62 percent of respondents expressing a lack of confidence in websites that require only a username and a password to sign in. Yet while consumers are much more conscious of the dangers awaiting them in the digital universe than they were a few years ago, RSA and Ponemon found that most have not yet adjusted their usage patterns to meet the new risks.

Consumers not incited to action, despite rising awareness

Nearly a third of the participants in the poll admitted to only having one to two passwords for all online accounts, while 69 percent said they use the same code for multiple devices or websites. Only 53 percent reported that they regularly change their passwords, without defining what regularly means.

But that recklessness doesn’t stop at the log-in sign. Even though Target Corp. and Home Depot Inc. lost credit and debit card data belonging to roughly 100 million customers to the same piece of malware in the span of one year, 45 percent of the respondents said they haven’t changed their digital shopping habits.

And e-commerce is only gaining traction, especially in the mobile world, which RSA’s Anti-Fraud Command Center found to account for a third of all banking transactions during the first half of 2014. That seemingly contracts with the fact that 77 percent of participants in the study admitted to not trusting app security, but the fact remains that smartphones and tablets are driving a bigger and bigger share of online transactions.

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