Bluetooth® usage among students as an indicator of security awareness and feeling

In this paper, we are examining the effect Bluetooth® usage has to security practices of students. Results drawn from a study we realized, in a pool of 7172 students in 17 Universities of 10 Eastern and Southern Europe countries, show that there is indeed a statistically significant connection. Namely, Bluetooth® users (who are mostly concentrated in younger student ages) feel mobile phones communication is more secure and at the same time they believe they are better informed about how the various options and characteristics of their phones affect its security. These users exhibit increased values of two subjective metrics that we named “mean security awareness value-MSAV” and “mean security feeling value-MSFV”. Their subjective awareness feeling is backed up by their answers to specific questions testing objectively their awareness. Unfortunately, however, although users that have Bluetooth® switched on and visible feel subjectively secure, their actual security behavior is worse than that of other users. Moreover, as it was found, limited Bluetooth® usage is correlated to limited security feeling. Thus, by enhancing users´ security feeling, operators and manufacturers will profit by increased Bluetooth® penetration while users will enjoy better services. Finally, as there are not available any already validated questionnaires in regards to this specific research topic, our research, apart from revealing the situation, aims at providing a basis for the formulation of similar questionnaires for future use.