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.
Read the rest of this entry »

japan.internet.com recently reported on the results of a survey conducted by JR Tokai Express Search into company intranet accounts and security. They interviewed 330 people from their monitor group on the 24th of January employed in the public or private sector. 94.8% were male (very high for them – it’s usually 80% or so, so I wonder if this is a misprint?), 17.9% in their twenties, 41.5% in their thirties, 32.4% in their forties, 7.3% in their fifties, and 0.9% aged sixty or older.

I’d have to answer “don’t know” to Q2 and Q3 too. Rather timely considering this survey, we’ve just had email from the IS team to say that the minimum password length for the intranet is being increased, plus it must contain at least one alphabetic and one numeric or symbol character, and from next month the password must be changed once every 30 days. As a bonus, we can also put a space character into it.

We have now at least four or five passwords between the user and the corporate network: desktops have BIOS password, Windows log in password, router password, and intranet password. For notebook computers it’s BIOS password, disk encryptor password, Windows log in password, wireless LAN smart card password, and intranet password. All these passwords are on different lifetime schedules, and of course most of them cannot be automated. All I can forsee is that the number of PostIt Notes around monitors will increase!
Read the rest of this entry »

With stories about the dangers of Winny flying around, japan.internet.com jumped on the bandwagon (see my previous stories on Winny usage and the greatest security threats of 2005), publishing a survey carried out in conjuction with goo Research to find out about people’s use of file sharing software. They interviewed 1,071 people from their internet monitor group. 41.6% of the respondents were male, 23.2% in their twenties, 44.1% in their thirties, 25.2% in their forties, and 7.5% in their fifties.

This survey talks about confidential data leakage due to Winny viruses, but I have not seen any information that confirms it is due to viruses, and not just down to people sharing their whole hard disk or the like.

I did once or twice use Winny, but gave up as first the download rate was unbelievably slow, second the selection of material was pretty poor (or my understanding of Japanese was), and third it was, as is much Japanese user interface design, incredibly cluttered and unintuitive for me to use.
Read the rest of this entry »

In the middle of March this year iShare surveyed the users of their CLUB BBQ mail forwarding service to see what they thought about file-sharing (or P2P) software. They got replies from 783 people, 74% male, but no age breakdown is available.

The most (in)famous P2P program in Japan is Winny, which has been responsible for rather a few data leaks. To be strictly correct, however, the software is not responsible, it’s the user for not knowing how to set it up correctly that’s the problem, along with lax security that allows people to install dodgy software on work computers, or to place confidential information on their home PCs. See also my other recent article that ranks it as the second greatest threat of 2005!

Note that since people are being asked to describe how they may be breaking the law, there might be some degree of reluctance for people to answer truthfully, so perhaps the true rate of file-sharing within this survey group is higher than reported. Note also that the population that has been surveyed here is perhaps a bit heavy on otaku.

Finally, BitTorrent is P2P but has a decent number of legitimate uses – how did that affect the results obtained? Is it even well-known in Japan?

UPDATE: translated and published another file sharing software use poll.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Information-Technology Promotion Agency, Japan, or IPA for short, or even 情報処理推進機構, jouhoushorisuishinkikou in Japanese, just published their lists of the top ten threats to information security in Japan in 2005 (Japanese PDF).

Please follow the linked articles to find out more information about each vulnerability. Please also read my recently-translated survey on the use of Winny and other P2P software.
Read the rest of this entry »

Toppan, a large Japanese corporation, published a press release relating to a survey they performed regarding views on financial institution security and Smart Card-based services. They questioned just 416 adults from Tokyo and surrounding area by means of a private internet-based survey over a couple of days in mid-November. The detailed survey results were not published, but instead the data was presented as a report, so will be translated in that form.

Note that an IC Cash Card is the Japanese term for a SmartCard-based ATM card. This definition excludes, I believe, credit cards with Chip and Pin functionality, and is sometimes associated with extra biometrics information – a good number of the ATMs in Japan are fitted out with fingerprint or vein scanners.

The bank I am with has recently changed their rules so that when using ATMs with a standard magnetic strip-based card, only (only?) 2,000,000 yen (£10,000 or US$20,000) can be transferred to another account per day, down from 5,000,000 yen per day; the same two million yen can also be withdrawn as cash. If using a Smart Card, the amount that can be transferred or withdrawn has been raised to TEN MILLION YEN, fifty thousand pounds or one hundred thousand dollars!
Read the rest of this entry »

My Voice conducted a web-based survey of their registered users regarding home security issues. There seems to be a lot of worry about burglary in particular.

The survey was conducted at the start of October, with 16,346 respondents. 41% were male, and 4% teenagers, 23% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 23% in their forties, and 11% fifty and over.

Q1: How uneasy do you feel about public order and crime around the area where you live? (Sample size=16,346)

I feel uneasy	17.0%
I feel a little uneasy	51.4%
I don’t really feel uneasy	27.4%
I don’t feel uneasy at all	4.1%

Read the rest of this entry »