One in every four UK students participates in hacking

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» 19 March 2010

Hacking becomes a casual practice in UK as one in every four teenagers in UK is believed to have attempted hacking another person’s Facebook or webmail accounts. This is based on a latest survey conducted in the country.

Majority of the young children online users in London and Cumbria believe and understand that hacking should not be patronized. According to a conducted online survey, 1,000 children in London and about 150 in Cumbria have this opinion regarding hacking. This result is about 78 percent of the sum of all the young respondents.

However, a minute number of children sneak into their schoolmate’s profiles to see their updates in the social networking websites. This age group ends up opening somebody else’s account once the password is determined.

There are various reasons as to why an individual resorts to hacking. User’s grounds for engaging in this mischievous activity are the following: as source of enjoyment for 46 percent of the respondents and mischief for the 21 percent. About one in every five did the act with the thought of earning money from it. Lastly, approximately 5 percent of the people considered this a job, though in a shady sense.

In addition to the above results, one-fourth of the youngsters who admitted to hacking accessed another person’s Facebook account, 18 percent opened a webmail account, 7 percent gained access through online shopping sites, 6 percent hacked their parent’s webmail, and 5 percent broke into a school website.

With regards about who was caught and not, about 27 percent were actually seized. And, 82 percent of the offenders considered that hacking is hard and dangerous.

Based on the conducted survey, one-third of the respondents were also victims of the said act when their webmail or Facebook accounts were hacked.

Tufin Technologies, a group of IT security experts, raised a poll with the cooperation of Cumbria Constabulary. It was found out that three in four children have tried hacking even before they reach the age of 13 years old. This proves that children from a small city like the Lake District will more likely attempt to hack compared to the youngsters from bigger cities.

Stuart Hyde, deputy chief of Cumbira Constabulary and leader of ACPO’s crime prevention efforts, recommends that users provide stronger passwords on their accounts as based on the result of the online poll. He believes that it becomes effortless for some users to hack an account if the owners would not protect it themselves. It also helps in decreasing cases of hacking when one uses tough passwords and if it would be changed periodically.

About 53 percent of the young respondents believe that hacking is, in fact, illegal and there is still a large number who thinks otherwise. Hence, it is necessary to educate this juvenile population in order to prevent more hacking on their part and also to protect them from this kind of action.

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