What University Students Do (or Don’t) Know about Security in their Mobile Phones

Abstract

We surveyed a pool of 433 students at the University of Banja Luka in Bosnia and Herzegovina during April 2010, examining users’ perceptions about mobile phones security. The main research hypothesis validated was that users are unaware of the necessary measures to avoid a possible unauthorized access and/or sensitive data retrieval from their phones and that they lack proper security education. Most of the results proved to be non-country specific, revealing that users feel mobile phone communication is not secure. We further present the results about users’ security practices regarding mobile phone usage.

Keywords

• mobile phone security
• mobile phone usage
• security practices
• user interface security
• questionnaire survey