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Prague, Czech Republic, March 31, 2020 – Avast (LSE:AVST), a global leader in digital security products, conducted an online survey before World Backup Day to raise awareness around the importance of securing data. The survey results reveal that 44% of Americans do not back up their data or files, risking data loss should they be destroyed or deleted.  

Reasons Americans do not back up their data

Of those who do not back up their data, nearly half (49%) claim they don’t have any data or files that are important enough to back up. Further reasons given were:

• 38% don’t know how to back up their data
• 14% want to, but forget 
• 9% want to, but don’t have time

How Americans back up their data

Of those who do back up their data, just over half (52%) of Americans back up their data to an external hard drive, 37% back up to a cloud storage, 34% back up to a USB or flash disk, 15% back up their phone to their PC, and 7% back up to a network storage drive. When asked how often they back up their data, Americans said:

• At least once a month: 45%
• Continuously: 17%
• Every 1-6 months: 18%
• Every 6-12 months: 11% 
• Less often than yearly: 9% 

iPhone vs. Android owners

When it comes to iPhone and Android phone owners, the percentage that back up is nearly the same, 62% and 65% respectively. How frequently they back up varies with 55% of iPhone users backing up their data at least once a month, while only 49% of Android users do the same. Fifteen percent of iPhone owners claim to back up continuously, and 19% of Android owners claim to do the same. 

The methods iPhone and Android users apply to back up their data vary only slightly: 

The reasons Android and iPhone device owners gave for not backing up also varied a bit. iPhone owners appear to think their data is more valuable than Android owners. Only 27% of iPhone owners don’t back up because they don’t think their data is important, versus 47% of Android owners who think the same. Thirty-two percent of both groups don’t know how to back up, and 17% of iPhone owners and 16% of Android owners forget to back up. When it comes to not having time to back up, 10% of iPhone owners and 7% of Android owners gave this as a reason.

Consequences of failing to back up

Data loss can be caused by users accidentally deleting their data themselves, hardware damage and failure, as well as malware, causing valuable data such as photos, videos, documents, and messages to be lost forever. Ransomware and other malware, such as wipers, can either encrypt or completely destroy files, and there is no guarantee that files can be decrypted if a ransom is paid. Between February 15 and March 15, 2020, Avast protected 5,317 American users from 157,353 attempted ransomware attacks. 

"The results are surprising, especially surprising is the amount of people that don't back up their data and the amount of people that don't know how to back up their data and files. It could be that many aren't aware they are backing up, as it could be happening automatically, in the background, however, others really might not be backing up at all, thinking it is not worth it. Losing personal documents, photos and videos can be a painful experience and it’s not until this happens that they realize how valuable it actually is,” said Luis Corrons, Security Evangelist at Avast. “It’s important to back up data on a regular basis, keeping memories, captured in the form of photos and videos, safe and secure.”

He shares the following tips on how to best back up data:

Back up to two locations

When it comes to backing up data, one can never be too careful. If anything happens to one form of back up, everything could be lost. It’s therefore recommended to back up data to two different locations, like the cloud, and a physical storage, like an external hard drive.

Disconnect

External hard drives should be disconnected after a back up is performed in order to protect them from malware like ransomware, which can spread from the computer to attached devices.

Automatically back up

Most cloud storage services offer an automatic backup option, which is advisable to activate, so that data is automatically backed up and secured. 

Online survey among 1,168 Avast and AVG users, February 20 - March 11, 2020.