Eset releases results of smartphone usage survey

10 Mar 2015

Eset has conducted a survey on social media of smartphone usage prior to the Mobile World Congress. It found that almost 10% of surveyed users had their phone lost or stolen in the last 12 months, 29% do not lock their smartphones, and almost 20% do not backup content on their smartphones at all.

The aim of the survey of about 500 smartphone users on social media was to gather data on mobile security.

According to Castro, another essential to protect against any damage is to back up the data stored on a smartphone regularly. Based on Eset's survey, 19.7% of users do not actually back up data at all and 35.7% only do sometimes (14.7% do so daily, 19.9% weekly and 10% monthly).

One of the best protection tools against physical breaches of phones is locking the device. However, 29.3% do not lock their phone or screen against unwanted access at all with the vast majority - 55.3% - doing so with a PIN number (12.5% use fingerprint and 3% face detector).

Two-factor authentication

Carey van Vlaanderen

"One of the best ways to protect access to business networks, as well as personal emails, is to use two-factor authentication," said Carey van Vlaanderen, CEO of Eset southern Africa.

Here we can support a welcome trend, 64.9% of those surveyed already used some form of second authentication for online services (e.g. via text messages).

This can be especially important for services like online banking, which is accessed by 53% of surveyed users.

In addition, the survey highlighted the importance of protecting the 'cloud' of smartphone users, with 26.9% already using solely these cloud services and 23.1% saving the data both locally and in the cloud.

Note: this survey has been conducted via Eset social media pages among about 500 social media users using smartphones, surveyed during 29 January to 17 February, 2015.