美国人对科技公司了解多少？非常有限

虽然比以往任何时候都依赖科技，但美国人对重大科技问题普遍缺乏了解，比如隐私政策、双重认证或者Facebook拥有哪些社交媒体app。

皮尤研究中心在考察了近4300名美国成年人的“科技智商”后，于10月9日公布了这一结论。调查结果表明，美国人能够做对关于钓鱼式诈骗和网站cookie的多选题，但在涉及到无痕浏览以及Facebook和推特的详细情况等问题时则遇到了困难。

该中心的研究副主任莫妮卡·安德森说，此项调查“有助于我们判断公众对科技[人员]所用知识的掌握程度，我们也更好地了解了当前的数字生活是什么样的”。

调查结果表明隐私和安全问题的学习曲线很长，而随着复杂网络犯罪、大规模盗取数据和隐私失误越来越多见，这些问题正在变得越发重要。美国联邦和各州监管机构也已经针对安全漏洞、令人困惑的数据政策以及消费者信息管理不当问题动用了大量科技手段。

总的来说，皮尤的调查表明美国人对当前一些最重要的科技问题缺乏了解。在调查的10个问题中答对7个或更多的成年人只有两成，全部答对的仅占2%。

教育看来对受访者的表现有相当大的影响。拥有本科或研究生学位的人更有可能更好地回答所有问题，其次是受过一些高等教育的人。高中及以下学历的受访者表现最差。

和年纪较大的人相比，年轻人更了解Facebook、推特和双重认证，这可能是因为他们更熟悉科技。

在所有受访者中，只有29%的人知道Facebook同时拥有WhatsApp和Instagram，近一半的受访者表示他们不太肯定。

对于这个问题，安德森说：“尽管Facebook仍然是美国成年人最喜欢的平台之一，并且多数美国人都在用它，但人们对它的了解并不多。”

同时，28%的受访者能够正确挑出描绘双重认证（即在密码之外要求用户提供第二种认证形式的安全程序）的一系列图片，答错的则占55%。无痕浏览，也就是不保留网站浏览记录的问题同样难住了受访者，24%的受访者找出了正确选项，即防止别人在使用同一台电脑时看到以前的在线活动记录。

本次调查还发现了一个大家都不很擅长的问题：认出推特的首席执行官杰克·多尔西。

只有15%的受访者找出了他的照片，从而让这个问题成为了本次调查中最难的一个。大多数人，或者说77%的受访者表示不能够确定哪个是多尔西，这是本次调查中占比最高的群体。

调查显示，大多数美国人都知道钓鱼式诈骗、网站cookie以及社交媒体平台大多靠广告收入支撑。（财富中文网）

译者：Charlie

审校：夏林

Although more dependent on technology than ever before, Americans don’t generally understand critical tech topics like privacy policies, two-factor authentication, or which social media apps Facebook owns.

The insights come from a survey published on October 9 by Pew Research Center, which quizzed nearly 4,300 U.S. adults about their tech IQs. The results showed that Americans were able to correctly answer multiple choice questions about phishing scams and website cookies but struggled with topics like private browsing and specifics about Facebook and Twitter.

The survey “helps us understand public awareness about the knowledge of the tech [people] are using,” said Monica Anderson, associate director of research for Pew. “We get a better concept of what digital life is today.”

The results reveal a big learning curve for privacy and security issues, which are becoming increasingly important with the rise of sophisticated cybercrime, massive data breaches, and privacy blunders. Federal and state regulators have put big tech in their crosshairs for lax security, confusing data policies, and for mismanaging of consumer information.

And overall, Americans lack understanding of some of the most important technology topics today, according to Pew’s survey. Only 20% of adults answered seven or more of the 10 questions correctly, and a mere 2% got all of those questions right.

Education appears to play a pretty large role in how people performed on the survey. People with college and graduate degrees were more likely to do better on every question, followed by people with some college education. People with high school degrees or less education did the worst.

Younger generations knew more about Facebook, Twitter, and two-factor authentication than older generations likely because of their familiarity with tech.

Only 29% of all respondents knew that Facebook owned both WhatsApp and Instagram, with nearly half saying they weren’t sure.

“Even though Facebook remains one of the most popular platforms among adults in the U.S., and even though a majority of Americans use it, there isn’t that much knowledge around it,” Anderson said, referencing Facebook’s ownership.

Meanwhile, 28% of Americans could correctly identify a set of images depicting two-factor authentication (a security process that requires users to provide a secondary form of verification in addition to a password ), with 55% answering incorrectly. Private browsing, which allows people to browse websites without storing history, also stumped people, with 24% percent of respondents correctly identifying it as preventing someone using the same computer from seeing previous online activities.

The study also revealed something apparently no one is very good at: Identifying Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Only 15% of respondents were able to identify his picture, making it the most difficult question on survey. Most people—77%—representing the largest consensus in the entire survey, said they were unsure.

A few things most Americans understand, according to the survey, was phishing scams, website cookies, and that social media platforms are mostly supported by ad revenue.