Battle of the Platforms: User Security and Privacy Edition
Investigating differences in privacy and security attitudes amongst iOS, Android, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa users in the United States.
By Desiree Abrokwa, Shruti Das, Omer Akgul, Michelle Mazurek
Mobile security and privacy concerns have rapidly risen to prominence within the human-centered computer security field as consumer technology continues to expand. The variance between existing technology platforms creates potential discrepancies in privacy and security attitudes with respect to their user groups. Given that some platforms advertise themselves as more privacy-protective than others, it seems natural to wonder whether users of one platform may be more security- and privacy-sensitive than users of another. For example, Apple has put significant effort into positioning themselves as leaders in the privacy space.
Previous mobile security research has been largely limited to analysis of only one platform at a time (often for simplicity’s sake). But, if there are systematic differences between the user populations of different platforms, studying only one platform at a time may introduce important biases or miss important potential findings.
We, therefore, sought to answer a series of questions: Are users from any particular consumer group more privacy conscious? Can we pinpoint a distinction between iOS and Android users? Or Google Home and Amazon Alexa users?
Survey Construction
To answer these questions, we created and delivered a privacy perception survey to analyze different characteristics between iOS vs. Android smartphone users, as well as between Google Home and Amazon Alexa smart speaker users.
To construct the survey questions, we used the following scales that have been proven to be valid measures of security and privacy.
- A Self-Report Measure of End-User Security Attitudes (SA-6)
- Validity and Reliability of the Scale Internet Users’ Information Privacy Concern (IUIPC) [Extended Version]
- Pew Knowledge and Skepticism Metrics *
* We used a subset of questions from Pew that were the most applicable to our study. These questions were related to “skepticism toward company data practices and knowledge about digital privacy and security.”
Survey Results
Through the crowdsourcing platform Prolific, we obtained a quasi-representative sample of the US population to administer our survey. After recruiting 493 participants, we found no differences in attitudes among these groups.
We did, however, discover that on average Android users in our study tended to show more privacy and security knowledge than the iOS users. We also found a negative correlation between their daily screen times and privacy concerns, skepticism of company data practices, and overall security and privacy knowledge.
Future Implications
For technology studies related to knowledge, our conclusions suggest that cross-platform representation of both Android and iOS users may be necessary, as Android users tended to be more tech-knowledgeable than iOS users. On the other hand, cross-platform recruitment may not be required to control for privacy and security concerns and attitudes. Lastly, while our current results may not generalize to non-US populations, an iteration of our survey specific to other population groups (e.g., accounting for cultural differences, the popularity of different devices, etc.) could allow for more generalizability of our results.
While the current results of our study are applicable to the Android and iOS users of today, the progression in technology evolution will require us to revisit our results in the coming years. Until then, we hope the outcomes of our study will provide context for the design of future research exploring uses and preferences in mobile and IoT security and privacy.
If you are interested in learning more about the research that we do at the University of Maryland’s Security Privacy and People (SP2) Lab, you can reach our research team at techperceptionstudy@gmail.com.
