Australians who use computers at home make extensive use of internet security devices, according to the AusCERT home users computer security survey 2008. Some 94 percent of those surveyed said they had antivirus software installed on their home computers, 72 percent also having anti-spam filtering and 86 percent having firewall tools. The overwhelming majority (75%) did not have or use parental-control or content-filtering software. The main reason respondents gave for not using any particular security tool (by about one-third in each case) was that their low risk as self-assessed rendered its use unnecessary. The data, obtained by polling a criterion-based sample of 1,001 Australian residents, were post-weighted to better reflect the age and sex distribution of the general Australian population.
Use of security applications (percent) [see attached PDF for graph]
Reference
- AusCERT 2008. Home users computer security survey 2008. Brisbane: AusCERT.