Digital Amnesia in practice: One third of consumers are willing to "leave" their friends for it smartphone of. Furthermore, 93% willingly give their smartphone PIN when asked, putting the security of their "digital best friend" at risk.
When during duration ενός πειράματος ζητήθηκε από τους συμμετέχοντες να αξιολογήσουν διάφορα άτομα και αντικείμενα στη ζωή τους κατά σειρά σπουδαιότητας, το 37% των συμμετεχόντων αξιολόγησε το smartphone του ως περισσότερο ή εξίσου σημαντικό με τους φίλους του. Τα αποτελέσματα του πειράματος, το οποίο πραγματοποιήθηκε από τα πανεπιστήμια του Würzburg και Nottingham Trent για account by Kaspersky Lab, show that smartphones tend to surpass friends in importance.
As part of the experiment, participants were asked to place images representing various people and objects in their lives in relation to themselves on a chessboard diagram. While family, friends and pets were generally placed closer to the participant than their smartphone, many other important people in the participant's life – including the people they work or study with every day – were placed one place behind in relation to with "digital companions".
About a third of participants (29%) said their smartphone is just as important and/or more important than their parents, while one in five said their digital device is the same and/or even more important than their parents. other half 17% of respondents rated their smartphone as the most important, although just 1% said their smartphone was more important than anything else in their life.
Despite the value placed on devices as a source of entertainment, information and storage data, experiment participants were more willing to share their smartphone PIN number when asked, allowing access to all of their personal and sensitive data. During the experiment, 93% of participants gave their "digital best friend's" PIN when prompted.
Astrid Carolus, Researcher of Media Psychology at the University of Würzburg and head of the study, commented: "Our phones are an integral part of our lives and this study proves this in terms of Psychology. Our "friendly" connection with the smartphone means that we have placed an incredible degree of trust in an inanimate object - to such an extent that we consider it one of the most important elements of our lives compared to many people. With that in mind, it surprised us especially when we found it was very easy to get the codes in our hands PIN of smartphone of those who participated in the study. We asked the participants to stay in a waiting room for a period of time and then asked them to tell us their height and code PIN of smartphone their. Without much hesitation, the vast majority of us gave it. "This is worrying, because it shows that we are willing to put our 'digital friends' - and the data contained in them - at risk".
The "equation" of digital devices with human qualities is not new. Corresponding experiments in the 1990 decade concluded that humans attribute human characteristics to computers when they interact with them. David Emm, Kaspersky Lab's Senior Security Researcher, commented on the security issues that an emotional connection can bring to a device: «After last year's study on "Digital Amnesia" - the phenomenon that means we forget the information we trust on our devices - our latest experiment highlights the strong emotional connection we have with our phones. Another interesting finding was that people rated their smartphones as much more important to them, compared to laptops or other devices that have the same level of information, which emphasizes the symbolic role that smartphones have in our lives as " digital companions ", who are always by our side. This emotional connection to the smartphone may mean that your decision-making process is more limited when it comes to protecting the data stored on it. We already know that many people forget to take care of the protection of their smartphones, as they see them almost as an extension of themselves. "So devices and users can be vulnerable to digital criminals."
The fact that many people attach more importance to telephones than their real friends and acquaintances shows how important it is to protect the information stored on them. Kaspersky Lab has been investigating the social implications of digitization for two years now and that it can make people more vulnerable to digital crime. An overview of these results is available at:
http://amnesia.kaspersky.com/.
