Smart4Gap

Abstract

Despite the importance of an up-to-date Operating System (OS) for smartphone security, few users update it whenever it becomes obsolete. We believe intellectual, financial, sociocultural and other factors may highly affect users' behaviour in updating their OS, and these factors might significantly vary among users of different demographics and users in different geographic locations. In this paper, we conducted a survey of 206 participants from different demographics in Japan and Tanzania (two countries with different socio-cultures, per-capita incomes, security and privacy perceptions). We study and analyze in-depth users' privacy and security attitudes to examine our claims. Our results show that in both countries, the majority of users, even those with higher education levels, do not either set their devices into auto-update mode or instantly update their smartphone OS despite the awareness of security issues. Moreover, users in Tanzania are mostly cost-conscious (mobile data is highly-priced), while those in Japan are mostly concerned with preserving phone battery. Furthermore, the majority of users who update their OS in Tanzania are motivated by improved User Interfaces (UI) and better device performance while in Japan, users are more motivated by security features, and they consider OS updates as generally important. Overall, in both countries, income and motivators are the major determinant for auto- and instant- update behavior for smartphone OS.