DOI: 10.5176/2251-2195_CSEIT18.134
Authors: Mabel Payne and Anthony Joseph
Abstract: This investigation entailed a survey of 77 residents from a Caribbean island to get the perspectives of a cross-section of the island's mobile phone users on the security, privacy, and sensitivity of information disclosed over mobile phones. The information gleaned from the survey data are useful to help establish baseline information on, at least some, Caribbean islands' mobile users' sensitivity to information disclosure as there is very limited scholarly research available on Caribbean islands' mobile phone users. The majority of the respondents had security applications on their mobile phones, and most were female students aged 21 and below. Respondents rated the level of sensitivity they perceived to disclosing their Name, Religion, Marital Status, Address, Phone Number, Picture, Income, Credit and Debit Cards' Details, Banking Details, Location, and Social Security Number over mobile phones. The three items with the highest sensitivity ratings were Banking Details, Credit and Debit Cards' Details, and Social Security Number; they were tied with each other. In addition, Banking Details and Credit and Debit Cards' Details were the most strongly correlated of the variables. The correlation value, 0.836, of this pair of variables was significant at the 0.01 probability level. The respondents' information disclosure sensitivity ratings profile was found to be similar to a sample of American mobile phone users. They also selected privacy over security as more important to them when disclosing information over a mobile phone. Moreover, five hypotheses were investigated with Independent Samples Mann- Whitney U Tests: (1) older and younger respondents’ have equivalent sensitivity ratings for disclosing their Address over a mobile phone; (2) older and younger respondents’ sensitivity ratings for disclosing their Phone Number over a mobile phone are essentially the same; (3) males' and females' have equivalent sensitivity ratings for disclosing Banking Details over a mobile phone; (4) males' and females' ratings of the sensitivity of disclosing Credit and Debit Cards' Details over mobile phones are essentially the same; and (5) professional and student respondents' sensitivity ratings of disclosing their Social Security Number over a mobile phone are not significantly different. Hypotheses (1), (2), and (5) were accepted at the 0.05 significance level because their associated probability values were greater than 0.05 and hypotheses (3) and (4) could not be accepted because their probability values were less than the 0.05 significance level threshold. It was suggested that these baseline information be expanded on through additional research of samples obtained from other Caribbean islands' mobile phone users.
Keywords:Caribbean mobile phone users; sensitivity ratings of information disclosure; mobile phone privacy and security concerns
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