Article Published In Vol.2 (May-June-2014)

A Study on the Adolescent Online Security Issues

Author : V. Sithira and Yok-Yen Nguwi

Internet has great influence to most people. It has spread rapidly and one can spend endless hours on internet activities. Excessive internet usage is an emerging threat and has negative impacts towards the youth. This group of users involve in various harmful activities without knowing the risks associated with it. This research targets on this group of people and investigate their common online activities and their behaviour towards these activities. We designed a study to acquire information on the types of common online activities; students’ reactions towards online activities; social networking interactions among students; students’ online security perception and perception on most risky online activities. The outcome of this study shows that majority of the respondents identified giving out personal information including personal information as the most risky activity online. Students are more apprehension in misuse of information and money compared to a possibility of malware infected systems. The study also reveals that female students are bolder and more vocal online compared to male students. This finding is supported by the work by Gareth Walsh and John Elliott on women involvement in serious crime and the figure is growing compared to a drop in male involving in crime.

Keywords: internet, threat, rootkits, internet cookies, spyware