IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2014 - 52

of users accessed the Internet using
a WiFi connection. The four most
popular handset operating systems
were found to be Blackberry, Symbian, IOS, and Android.
Six out of 23 questions were
directly related to user awareness

third question dealt with awareness
regarding blocked content and traffic monitoring, the fourth dealt with
the attitudes towards the additional
security or circumvention tools,
and applications downloads. The
last two questions focused on the

In slow-developing countries,
where modern technology is less
affordable, the mobile market
is strongly controlled.
of content blocking, interception,
and traffic filtering. These questions indicate the users' threat
awareness and their capacity to
protect themselves by downloading and installing missing data
protection applications or tools.
The first question addressed the
attitudes towards the handset firmware updates; it was assumed that
new versions of the Operating Systems (OS) provide more secure
privacy features. The second question addressed the skill levels for
security application updates. The

awareness about traffic monitoring
and blocked content, as well as the
level of trust enjoyed by particular
mobile market stakeholders.

Availability of
the Circumvention Tools
Before analyzing the user survey
responses, experts were invited to
provide their own country insight
into the availability of circumvention and other data protection tools
for the most frequently used smartphones in their respective markets.
It was found that the majority of

users in the target countries use
smartphones. This indicator varies from one country to another:
96% of the surveyed users in
China, 93% in Saudi Arabia, 92%
in the Sultanate of Oman, 73% in
Syria, 70% in Uzbekistan, 62%
in Vietnam, 41% in Iran, and 36%
in Azerbaijan. The smartphone
operating systems combine many
of the vulnerabilities [4] of personal computer operating systems
with a complex selection of user
interface modules, a variety of real
world sensors, communications
capabilities, and an endless range
of applications, among other features. These applications are available for most of the handsets and
they are either preinstalled by the
manufacturers or downloaded from
various mobile software distribution platforms. The smartphone
OS and Application Program Interface (API) security levels depend
on the security designs provided
by the operating system developers and their decisions regarding
which protection applications to
be installed [5]. Despite a wide
variety of hardware manufacturers,

How Often Do You Encounter Blocked Websites?

100
90
80
70

(%)

60
50
40
30
20
10

Don't Know

Never

Rarely

ag
e

Av
er

is
i

Sometimes

Tu
n

la
ru
Be

Sy
ria
U
zb
ek
is
ta
n
Vi
et
na
m

bi
a
ra

ud
iA

O
m

Ira
n

a
hi
n
C

Az
er
b

ai
ja

Often

Fig.1. How often users notice that the Internet content is blocked?
52

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

WINTER 2014

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