I made a reference to an illuminating survey in a presentation a little while ago, but forgot where I heard it. Well, if you're checking my sources, here it is:

Office workers give away passwords for a cheap pen

By John Leyden
Published Friday 18th April 2003 08:24 GMT

Workers are prepared to give away their passwords for a cheap pen, according to a somewhat unscientific - but still illuminating - survey published today.

The second annual survey into office scruples, conducted by the people organising this month's InfoSecurity Europe 2003 conference, found that office workers have learnt very little about IT security in the past year.

If anything, people are even more lax about security than they were a year ago, the survey found.

Ninety per cent of office workers at London's Waterloo Station gave away their computer password for a cheap pen, compared with 65 per cent last year.

Men were slightly more likely to reveal their password with 95 per cent of blokes, compared to 85 per cent of women quizzed, prepared to hand over their password on request.

The survey also found the majority of workers (80 per cent) would take confidential information with them when they change jobs and would not keep salary details confidential if they came across them.

If workers came across a file containing everyone's salary details, 75 per cent of workers thought they would be unable to resist looking at it, again up from 61 per cent in 2002. A further 38 per cent said they would also pass the information around the office.

Naughty.

Even more here ...

Ok. Repeat after me: "I will not exchange my company's security for a cheap pen." (At least hold out for a Montblanc.)

Labels: information breaches, privacy