Brazil had the worst performance in the “digital habits” category in a survey by the Panamanian company Nord VPN about online privacy skills and knowledge. In the survey, the company, which specializes in virtual security and privacy, interviewed 48.063 people from 192 countries and listed scores for the 21 nations with the highest number of respondents.

Regarding the “digital habits” category, only 33,4% of respondents in Brazil scored well. According to the survey, the main problems in the country include the lack of reading of terms of service (38,3%) and lack of knowledge of the main privacy tools (23,3%) and the capacity of the Facebook collecting data from people outside the platform (27,8%).

“The Brazilian population understands the main security measures, but they also don’t care about more basic and equally important issues, such as how their apps and online services work,” explains Daniel Markuson, digital privacy specialist at NordVPN.

O Vida Celular contacted the company's press office in Brazil to obtain the research results based on mobile access, but the company did not specify this when collecting data.

Other categories

In other areas, however, Brazilians performed well. In the category “digital risk tolerance,” which involves knowledge of cyber threats, the country scored well in 75,2% of responses, ahead of India, Turkey and Japan. Among the best assessments by Brazilians regarding digital behavior are creating strong passwords (81,2%), how to deal with phishing emails from fraudulent banks (89,5%) and how to respond to notifications from unknown devices connected to the email account (86,3%).

The National Privacy Test, as the survey is called, assesses how people in different countries understand digital security and privacy. Scores are measured based on responses to 20 questions that analyze users' habits, privacy awareness and risk tolerance. The 21 countries involved in the study were: South Africa, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, United Kingdom, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States.

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