Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Cybersecurity company Surfshark recently ran a thought-provoking marketing stunt on the streets of London. The campaign featured a transparent truck with a toilet and a person inside, highlighting the importance of being cautious when sharing personal information online.
The sides of the truck read ‘How much are you willing to share?’ and ‘Why are you sharing data but not this?’ and the transparent mobile ‘loo’ visited various busy areas, from Canary Wharf to Soho, for approximately half an hour at each location, with Tower Bridge serving as the main stop.
The idea behind the campaign was to create an analogy between overexposing yourself online and in real life. People can overshare their data online in multiple ways. They may share every moment of their lives on social media, including sensitive information.
People often browse public unsecured Wi-Fi networks, fail to update their software and click on random links without giving them much thought. But in reality, this leaves internet users and their sensitive data exposed to third parties, much like transparent walls in the loo left the person inside exposed to the prying eyes of passers-by.
“The campaign aims to raise a discussion on online privacy — just like you wouldn’t want the walls of your loo to be transparent, you shouldn’t want your data to be easily accessible by third (and potentially malicious) parties,” says Lina Survila, a spokesperson at Surfshark. “We want people to take their privacy seriously by being careful when sharing data online and using proper cybersecurity tools, like a VPN or antivirus. Surfshark’s extensive monitoring of data breach trends over the past two decades reveals an alarming digital reality: data leaks persist as an ongoing global threat. Since 2004, a total of 17.2B accounts have been breached, and approximately 6.5B of them have unique email addresses. That means a single email address is breached around three times on a global scale
Globally, billions of unique user accounts have unwittingly had their information disseminated beyond their control due to leaks
Surfshark has long voiced concerns about data privacy, with our research on data breaches revealing concerning statistics:
The creative stunt was executed in the UK since it has experienced numerous data breach incidents and is ranked as the 7th most breached nation globally over the past 20 years. During this time, a staggering 1 billion personal records have been exposed. On average, each email address is leaked with three additional data points, increasing the risk of personal information exposure. To draw attention to these alarming statistics, London’s dynamic atmosphere provided an ideal backdrop for initiating crucial conversations about privacy and challenging the status quo.
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