Kaspersky: 1 in 5 Filipinos still scared of paying online
By EMMIE V. ABADILLA
Many Filipinos, like most Southeast Asians, still get the jitters when paying online, according to the latest findings of cybersecurity firm Ksspersky.
Both the oldest and the youngest generations find it scary to go cashless.
While digital payment has become the norm for many consumers, especially in this pandemic times, one in five (21 percent) of cashless payment service users in the Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia (SEA) still experience anxiety when performing online transactions.
Significantly, senior citizens (sixty years old and above) worry more about online transactions compared with the younger generation.
Almost 1 in 3 seniors in SEA become anxious when making online payments, Kaspersky data revealed.
Worry is highest among the oldest group, the Silent Generation - people born from 1928 to 1945, (30 percent).
Interestingly, the seniors are followed by the youngest generation at 27 percent.
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Almost one in five (17 percent) users in SEA admitted that they would rather pay with cash, wherein the oldest generation again logged the highest percent (20 percent) among all the age groups.
Adapting to these new technologies can also present a challenge to the Silent Generation with 20 percent of them noting difficulties on doing financial transactions online.
On the brighter side, nearly a quarter (24 percent) of all respondents from Southeast Asia indicated that they fully trust digital payments.
“The older adults are not from the internet age," says Sandra Lee, Kaspersky Managing Director for Asia Pacific.
"Their worries are understandable and should be seen as a precautionary measure towards making a costly mistakes in a technology they are still learning to use."
However, "Most of them (26 percent) trust digital payment platforms," she stressed.
Given their preference to being careful online, it is not surprising that the oldest generation favors the efficiency of antivirus software the most.
More than three in five (61 percent) of adults aged 55 and above showed the highest level of trust towards security solutions compared with the younger age groups.
While on the average, half of all generations in SEA (50 percent) understood the need for antivirus software to protect their money and online data, Gen Z showed the least trust, at 46 percent, Millennials at 49 percent, and Gen X at 52 percent.
Almost a quarter (20 percent) of all respondents felt that the use of antivirus software was sufficient, followed by 17 percent where respondents were uncertain or unaware about how antivirus could help them mitigate the risk of financial loss.
Alarmingly, there is still some 14 percent who said that antivirus software was not an essential tool in the fight against cyber threats seeking to compromise financial data and property.
“The true significance of security solutions should be best understood at present time when we hear about scams and financial frauds," Lee warned.
"Cybercriminals understand our habits and emotional states, as they are humans, too," she explained.
"We have seen how they are becoming more and more creative in targeting us with their social engineering attacks so we urge all generations to look into safeguarding their devices with the right tools to secure not only their data but most importantly their hard-earned money,”