Any project requiring me to get up from a perfectly lovely Seattle hotel bed at 1:00 a.m. is not to be trusted. What was it that Thoreau said, “distrust any endeavor requiring new clothes?” Well, if he did media work for a major technology company, he’d be just as miffed about early morning calls for satellite media tours.
As you already guessed, the lucky person, now sleepless in Seattle, was me. The satellite media tour that started with our first on camera interview at 3:00 a.m. Pacific time didn’t end until after 9:30 a.m., some 30 interviews later. Fortunately, we’d chosen a unique location for our camera crew, a coffee shop/wifi hotspot in West Seattle. And today’s big story was the release of a new research study called “Norton’s Riskiest Online Cities.” The reason we were basing our media campaign in the Emerald City is that Seattle was rated the most risky online city in the US, according to the Symantec/Norton report.
Every year the intrepid research team in Symantec’s Security Response group put out a massive study called the Internet Security Threat Report. It’s a compilation of all kinds of trend data about global cybercrime activity. Using that data repository as a starting point, the Riskiest Online Cities study was able to associate attempts at cybercrime and infected spam zombies and botnet-hosting computers with actual IP addresses. Then we could associate those IP addresses with geographic locations. This gave us our first view of actual cybercrime activity launched against locations.
The next step was to get a handle on what kinds of activities people throughout the US engage in that might increase their level of risk from cybercrime. Our partner, Bert Sperling of Sperling’s BestPlaces stepped in with fantastic demographic data about the level of Internet access, expenditures on software and hardware, availability of wireless (Wi-Fi) hotspots, adoption and availability of broadband, and online risky behaviors like online banking and shopping. Combining that per capita information with the cybercrime information allowed us to rank each city and find those whose residents are at the greatest potential cybercrime risk.
Seattle was the clear leader, being the only city to rank in the top 10 for each of the study’s categories. The rest of the top ten, in order, are Boston, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Raleigh (NC), Atlanta, Minneapolis, Denver, Austin, Portland (OR).These are some of the most tech-savvy cities in the nation, proving that even skilled and experienced Internet users are at risk when it comes to cybercrime and online security.
Want to see how your home city ranked? Visit the website: www.nortonriskiestonlinecities.com for more information on the methodology and a listing of all 50 U.S. cities in the study.
The study doesn’t mean that if you live in Seattle or another highly ranked city that you will be victimized by cybercriminals. It’s meant as an assessment of risk. Just as your car insurance company might associate poor driving habits from your neighbors with an increased possibility you will be a poor driver and charge you more.
And it’s also likely that even if you live in a small city not in our study or your city was ranked relatively low on the level of risk, that your personal habits put you into a high risk group. If you are someone who lives their life online enjoying a highly connected lifestyle, even if you live in a low-tech, off-the-grid kind of place, you are still at higher risk than others in the same area.
No matter where your city ranks on the list, you must continue to follow online safety best practices to decrease your online risk.
- Use legitimate security software with comprehensive protection and keep it up to date.
- Keep your computer’s operating system, browser and other Internet software up to date and patched.
- Always assume your Wi-Fi connections are being eavesdropped on. Save your sensitive financial transactions (shopping, banking, taxes) until you’re safely at home or at another secure location.
- Use complex passwords and unique ones for each site. One Seattle resident I know was hacked on his e-mail, which allowed the crook to hack his social network and convince his duped friends to send emergency funds.
- Be cautious about ads and pop-ups. We’ve seen a huge increase in fake antivirus products, tricking users into downloading malicious software and then demanding money to get the programs off the computer.
- Stay educated, stay informed. Visit the Symantec website for more information about security topics.
One benefit of doing that lengthy media campaign from a cozy coffee shop was the steady stream of gourmet espresso beverages we enjoyed. One of my new favorites was a Mexican Mocha with cayenne pepper! Arriba! Kudos to Laurie, the charming and hospitable owner of Hotwire Coffee Shop, who welcomed us into her store with all of our lights, crew and hubbub. If you are in West Seattle, be sure to stop by!