世論 What Japan Thinks

Last year I looked at a survey on influenza issues, but this year it’s a different kind of virus, the computer sort, that we look at in a survey conducted by goo Research into 60-79 year old computer users and security matters.

Demographics

Over the 6th and 7th of December 2007 613 members of the goo Research monitor panel were interviewed. 50.1% were female, 73.6% in their sixties, and 26.4% in the seventies.

One-click fraud is a type of fraud perhaps not unique to Japan, but Google doesn’t turn up any reports from other countries when searching in English. Basically the idea is that you get a spam, or click on a link somewhere and end up at the target page which suddenly tells you you’ve registered and need to pay a vast sum of money for monthly membership, or they’ll send the boys round. This seems to work well in Japan due to some combination of unwillingness of the victims to cause a fuss and weak consumer protection and other law enforcement. Actually, my wife ended up on somewhere similar after filling in details on a prize draw advertised through Chikyuu no Arukikata’s web site (Japan’s top independent traveller guide brand) and had to change email addresses due to 40-plus emails per day pestering her to join a dating site. I told her to complain to Chikyuu no Arukikata for betraying her trust, but even though she is quite expert at flame mails in other cases, she seemed reluctant for some reason I couldn’t deduce.

Research results

Q1A: How well do you understand the computer-related term virus? (Sample size=613)

	All	Male N=306	Female N=307
Understand a lot about it	29.0%	32.7%	25.4%
Understand the main points	45.8%	47.7%	44.0%
Understand a little about it	21.0%	17.7%	24.4%
Understand almost nothing	2.9%	2.0%	3.9%
Understand nothing, first time I’ve heard of it	1.1%	0.0%	2.3%

Q1B: How well do you understand the computer-related term phishing fraud? (Sample size=613)

	All	Male N=306	Female N=307
Understand a lot about it	19.7%	24.2%	15.3%
Understand the main points	41.6%	46.7%	36.5%
Understand a little about it	25.0%	21.9%	28.0%
Understand almost nothing	11.3%	6.5%	16.0%
Understand nothing, first time I’ve heard of it	2.5%	0.7%	4.2%

Q1C: How well do you understand the computer-related term one-click fraud? (Sample size=613)

	All	Male N=306	Female N=307
Understand a lot about it	17.1%	21.6%	12.7%
Understand the main points	38.5%	44.4%	32.6%
Understand a little about it	27.6%	22.9%	32.3%
Understand almost nothing	13.5%	10.1%	16.9%
Understand nothing, first time I’ve heard of it	3.3%	1.0%	5.5%

Q2: Do you have anti-virus software installed on your home computer? (Sample size=613)

	All	Male N=306	Female N=307
Installed and use regularly (to SQ)	62.6%	66.0%	59.3%
Installed but use occasionally (to SQ)	13.4%	15.4%	11.4%
Installed but don’t use (to SQ)	4.1%	4.3%	3.9%
Installed but don’t know how to use it (to SQ)	9.0%	6.5%	11.4%
Not installed	7.8%	6.9%	8.8%
Don’t know	3.1%	1.0%	5.2%

Q2SQ: Do you update your anti-virus software virus detection patterns, etc? (Sample size=546)

	Update	Don’t update	Don’t know
All	85.0%	8.4%	6.6%
Installed and use regularly	97.4%	1.0%	1.6%
Installed but use occasionally	74.4%	20.7%	4.9%
Installed but don’t use	52.0%	32.0%	16.0%
Installed but don’t know how to use it	29.1%	30.9%	40.0%

Q3: Thinking about phishing fraud issues, if you got a mail request apparently from your service provider asking for personal information would you provide it? (Sample size=546)

	All	Male N=306	Female N=307
Would provide information	21.0%	20.6%	21.5%
Would not provide information	79.0%	79.4%	78.5%