73% of Britains don't know how to recognise a secure website

Almost three-quarters of the British population don't know how to recognise a secured website.

The survey, by online bingo portal WhichBingo.co.uk, asked players how they determined which sites they could trust with their credit card details and other personal information. Only 27% of the 250 respondents were aware of the Security Certificates used by websites to protect private information that is passed from the end-user to the merchant.

A website that has a valid Security Certificate is represented on a website by a padlock icon in the bottom right corner, or in the address bar, of the browser.

57% said their decision on whether or not to give the site their details was made within just a few seconds of visiting and was based on the appearance of the site, while 69% would be put off by a site which contained spelling mistakes.

Brand awareness and reputation ranked highly on trust factors people looked for, with 52% looking for reviews of the site they were considering dealing with prior to entering any details.

On sites where credit card information wasn't required, the survey respondents were even more open to giving out their private data, such as their e-mail address. 88% said they would willingly provide their e-mail address regardless of whether they consider the site to be secure.

"During 2009 there were 33.9 million adults in the UK who purchased goods or services online. A large majority of these transactions will have been completed via unsecure websites due to a lack of understanding from the consumer. The results of our survey make it clear that more needs to be done to raise the level of understanding of online security, especially as the growth in paid services and games, such as online bingo, continues." said Phil Fraser, of WhichBingo.co.uk.

An analysis of the 10 leading online bingo sites found that only four had fully secured registration processes, although the six sites without secure registration forms did protect their banking and deposit systems. Ladbrokes, Gala Bingo and Mecca Bingo secured both their registration and deposit forms, while Bingo.com was the only site to secure their entire domain.

None of the Cashcade or 888 owned websites featured security protection on their registration forms, despite all carrying a message stating that the users data was in fact secured using SSL.

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