世論 What Japan Thinks

A recently-reported, but not recently-conducted survey conducted by DIMSDRIVE Research looked at computer security.

Demographics

Between the 16th of September and the 7th of November 2010 7,937 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group with a home computer completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 51.1% of the sample were male, 0.7% in their teens, 11.2% in their twenties, 31.9% in their thirties, 33.1% in their forties, 15.4% in their fifties, and 7.7% aged sixty or older.

My main security software is Microsoft Security Essentials, which does the business. On my desktop PC running Vista, the daily updates then scans really bog the machine down for 30 minutes, despite setting it to only use 30% or less of the system resources. I used to run Avast!, again free, but it prompts once a year for a free license update, but last year I just couldn’t get the message to go away. It’s quite sad that most people get stuck with commercial packages that they don’t really rate very highly just because it comes bundled on the computer.
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With viruses – well, more often Trojans – spreading to smartphones, in particular to Android devices, this recent survey from goo Research looked at smartphone security, with japan.internet.com reporting in particular on anti-virus software installation.

Demographics

Between the 11th and 15th of July 2011 1,082 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.7% of the sample were male, 16.5% in their teens, 18.3% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.5% in their forties, 15.1% in their forties, and 12.2% aged sixty or older.

Android security is a very interesting subject; given the security model, I think even for an experienced user a security solution is necessary. Anti-virus is the default choice for people coming from the PC world, but on the limited resources of a mobile phone there has to be a better way! Some of the more interesting solutions are those offered by Mocana, the secure firmware implementation called WishperCore, TOMOYO Linux, and Kirin and TraintDroid, to name but a few.
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Since the Fukushima Dai-ichi meltdown, one of the problems occuring has been the worries about radioactive particles in the tap water (I’d argue that the worries exceed the actual danger), so it was interesting to see this survey from iShare into drinking water for infants.

Demographics

On the 13th of June 2011 576 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 63.9% of the sample were female, 11.8% in their twenties, 80.6% in their thirties, and 7.6% in their forties. All of the sample lived in Tokyo prefecture and had bought mineral water for infants.

The one or two times I’ve been in Tokyo, however, I don’t think I’ve actually drunk the water, so I cannot say how nice or otherwise it is.

In Q7SQ, I never knew there was a recommended water for formula milk! Soft water is apparently the correct answer, and most of the water in Japan is soft. Q10 and Q10SQ shows just over three in four women with infants worry about Fukushima fallout in their water – do is that a larger or smaller percentage than you would imagine?

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Since the Fukushima Dai-ichi meltdown, one of the problems occuring has been the worries about radioactive particles in the tap water (I’d argue that the worries exceed the actual danger), so it was interesting to see this survey from iShare into drinking water for infants.

Demographics

On the 13th of June 2011 576 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 63.9% of the sample were female, 11.8% in their twenties, 80.6% in their thirties, and 7.6% in their forties. All of the sample lived in Tokyo prefecture and had bought mineral water for infants.

For Q2, people were asked why they had stocked up on water since the earthquake, some of the more common answers were that they wanted to have a supply if the tap water became contaminated, they don’t want their children to drink tap water, they stocked up just in case, and domestic water is safer than imported brands. That final option does seem a bit odd to me.
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With news of LulzSec and other hackers making off with passwords, and other attacks based around people’s GMail accounts, this recent survey from goo Research, reported on by japan.internet.com, into email passwords is rather timely. Note that I have previously translated an older survey into passwords.

Demographics

Over the 31st of May and the 1st of June 2011 1,077 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.7% of the sample were male, 17.0% in their teens, 17.7% in their twenties, 21.4% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 16.1% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

I have absolutely no idea what my email passwords are! My Gmail ones are 20 characters long and randomly generated and managed by KeePass (fiddly to get the hang of, but this is a good tutorial) and my ISP one is the one they supplied, a 10 character mixed case alphanumeric one. My wife, without any training from me, keeps her in text files and uses a different one for each site, at least 8 characters long and a mix of usually names and semi-random numbers. Not the best of security, but at least she varies on every site, which in practise might actually provide more overall security than one big long one used everywhere.
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A not-too-surprising result from a poll from Gallup International conducted in 47 different countries is that overall support for nuclear power dropped from about 25% in favour to just 6%. Note that I cannot find the survey on Gallup International web site, but instead there is a truncated result on a Pakistan affiliate’s web site, then another blog post also from Pakistan.

On a more positive note, 38% are pessimistic about Japan recovering, but 30% expect it to return to the same level, and 18% for it to get stronger. I’m personally half in the 18% camp and half in the 30%; I’d be more optimistic if the government could get its act together, or step aside and let someone more competent lead, but at the moment there’s a definite shortage of people less useless than Naoto Kan.

The blog post also notes that:

Notably the conservative or pessimistic view on resilience of the economy comes from within Japan itself where 55% are somewhat skeptical and its close neighbors, South Korea, where 47% hold this view and China where 67% are pessimistic. These views may reflect a modesty in the Japanese and East Asian cultures about what they can achieve.

For Japan, it’s perhaps that the Japanese are too aware of the current leadership of the country, and as both South Korea and China are not exactly the best of friends with Japan I wouldn’t really expect the average person to be cheering for Japan.

Given that Microsoft started last year giving away the rather useful Microsoft Security Essentials and that this survey from goo Research and reported on by japan.internet.com into anti-virus software found that price was the biggest factor when choosing a package, one would have thought that the percentage of paid software users would have been lower.

Demographics

Between the 5th and 11th of January 2011 1,081 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 53.0% of the survey were male, 16.4% in their teens, 18.0% in their twenties, 21.5% in their thirties, 16.5% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 12.0% aged sixty or older.

One key reason for the high rate of paid software is, I suspect, heavy television advertising by at least two or three vendors raising awareness of the need to buy amongst users. However, I would admit that it is also possible that it is the high rate of payers that spurs the advertising market rather than the other way around.

As mentioned above, I now use Microsoft Security Essentials which does everything I need. I used to use Avast!, but it started nagging me in the autumn to upgrade to the paid version but didn’t seem to have any obvious way to turn off the warnings.
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Just in time for the New Year nengajo postcard season, goo Research performed a survey, reported on by japan.internet.com, into that subject, with the report focusing on a service from mixi, Japan’s largest SNS, that allows people to send physical postcards to virtual friends, while maintaining the pseudo-anonymity of people’s online handles.

Demographics

Over the 7th and 8th of December 2010 1,098 members of the goo Research online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 52.9% of the sample were male, 16.8% in their teens, 18.1% in their twenties, 21.6% in their thirties, 16.1% in their forties, 15.6% in their fifties, and 11.8% aged sixty or older.

Since Facebook doesn’t offer such a service for Christmas cards (as far as I know), I can conclude that either such a degree of privacy is of no great concern to the average Facebook user or that the average user has no urge to send cards to their Facebook friends. Perhaps it might be more of the second, as surveys have found that Japanese have a significantly lower number of social network friends, indicating that they are more discerning about who they befriend.

Q3 is a quite surprising result from my point of view; note that the question refers to disclosing your address to mixi only, not to your contacts on the SNS, yet 70% don’t feel too happy about doing so.
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A recent quickie survey from iShare looked at file extensions.

Demographics

Between the 7th and 12th of July 2010 479 members of the CLUB BBQ free email forwarding service completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 56.2% of the sample were male, 31.7% in their twenties, 32.2% in their thirties, and 36.1% in their forties.

There’s not really much for me to add to this survey except that I know all the extensions listed below.
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Recently DIMSDRIVE Research took a look at shredders and personal information.

Demographics

Between the 22nd of July and the 6th of August 2009 9,590 members of the DIMSDRIVE monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 50.1% of the sample were male, 1.1% in their teens, 11.9% in their twenties, 32.2% in their thirties, 31.5% in their forties, 16.5% in their fifties, and 6.8% aged sixty or older.

In Q1, just in case you are wondering what a personal information-hiding stamp is, well, I can sell you one of these. It’s a stamp that overprints data with a tight pattern in order to obscure the original text which I thought was just a novelty, but 6.4% of the sample use one.

I myself have an electric shredder that we bought mail-order for about 10,000 yen a few years ago. It’s a quite large home office size, but it works well, although it does clog up if you put plastic wrappers through…
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