Security is No Match for Chocolate and Good Looking Women

A survey out today by the organizers of the tech-security conference Infosecurity Europe found that 21% of 576 London office workers stopped on the street were willing to share their computer passwords with a good looking woman holding a clipboard. People were offered a chocolate bar in exchange for the information. More than half of the people surveyed said they used the same password for everything. As depressing as the survey may be for the security pros whose job it is to keep corporate networks safe, the results are a substantial improvement over last year. That was when 64% of people were willing to give away their passwords. But there were other disturbing signs this year: 61% of workers surveyed shared their birthdates and a similar number – 60% of men and 62% of women – shared their names and telephone numbers. This doesn’t sound particularly damaging, but cyber criminals could use this information to craft so-called phishing emails that install malicious computer code when opened or try to convince people to cough up more damaging information like a bank account number.
http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/04/16/security-is-no-match-for-chocolate-and-good-looking-women/?mod=WSJBlog