The use of instant messaging applications among swedish students and their security awareness

Sammanfattning: Instant Messaging Mobile (IM) applications are now ubiquitous and predominant in most person-to-person communications, especially intimate and sensitive conversations. This growing popularity of instant messaging is linked directly to the characteristics of speed, immediate and convenience that an IM holds which is a strong appeal for anyone that wants to communicate and collaborate in real-time with others. However, it is these features including presence awareness (the ability for IM users to know who is online and available), group chats, share media, links, and stream content as well as text and voice messages, that exposes the IM apps to the concerns of privacy and security. This essay aims to study the behavior of higher education students towards privacy and security as it concerns the use of instant messaging applications when communication informally and formally.To gather the desired data, a quantitative survey was created and distributed electronically at the University of Skövde in Sweden. Through the statistical analysis, this study presents the attitude of the participants towards the security and privacy of mobile IM applications. In conclusion, this report showed that the behavior of Swedish students towards digital security and privacy and the use of mobile IM applications were of low concern but not alarming. The analyzed results give a fair picture of the reasons for the choice of IM apps, the uses of the apps and the participant's knowledge about security and privacy. While there was some level of concern about who else could read messages sent via these IM devices between intended parties, the decision of which IM app participants had a preference for was not driven by privacy or security concerns. Furthermore, the majority of the participants believed that communicating with the IM app could be used for purposes other than informal messaging. This is significant because the student population will become part of the workforce soon and will handle sensitive, proprietary, and confidential information.