世論 What Japan Thinks

I run anti-virus software at home, and at work of course, but there always is the worry that it’s chewing up system resources – at work a full disk scan starts at noon on Wednesdays and takes around two hours to process my desktop, rendering most other tasks pretty much unusable – but better safe than sorry, which is, I suppose, how TrendMicro and the rest make their money. To find out what the average Japanese person uses at home, japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Research Inc into anti-virus software.

Demographics

On the 19th of March 2008 331 members of the JR Tokai Express Research online monitor group employed in either the private or public sector completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 83.7% of the sample was male, 10.6% in their twenties, 38.4% in their thirties, 35.3% in their forties, 12.7% in their fifties, and 3.0% in their sixties.

For free software, the best virus protection is probably AVG Anti-Virus, which I recommend should be used in conjunction with a spyware detector, with SpyBot Search and Destroy being the one I employ on a regular basis.

Research results

From the 331 people in the initial sample, 319 had computers at home. They were asked the following question.

Q1: Do you have anti-virus software installed on your home computer? (Sample size=319)

Yes (to SQ1)	85.6%
No (to SQ2)	10.7%
Don’t know	3.8%

The most common software installed was VirusBuster, the Japanese brand name for TrendMicro’s PC-Cillin, with 34.1% using it. Next was Norton Anti-Virus, with 24.5%, and McAfee Virus Scan with 8.4%.

Q1SQ1: What was the main reason why you chose your particular anti-virus software? (Sample size=273)

Was cheap	19.7%
Was free	10.6%
Was pre-installed	16.3%
Has robust detection, removal features	19.4%
Friends, family recommended it	8.1%
No particular reason	13.4%
Don’t know	0.6%
Other	11.9%

Q1SQ2: What was the main reason why you don’t use anti-virus software? (Sample size=46)

Slows down PC	25.9%
Costs money	22.2%
Never had a virus	9.3%
Regularly use online scanner	7.4%
Don’t know which anti-virus tool is best to buy	9.3%
No particular reason	11.1%
Other	14.8%