In 2012 only 50% of the Italian population used Internet, yet with lot of caution and unease. In this survey we’re going to show which are the threats people are usually afraid of, and how much and why they’re concerned about them.
The dots shown below represent how much Internet users in Italy are concerned about the potential threats of the Web.
The sample group is based on 2012’s National Institute of Statistic Family Survey; we focused on people 16+ who use Internet regularly. Each dot on the map (generated with Gephi) shows the intensity of concern—the FearRank—based on the amount of affirmative answers to the questions about concerns related to the Web. The size and the opacity of the dots are proportional to the intensity of the FearRank.
Surfing the Internet can involve lots of different activities with different purposes.
Six kinds of concerns have been mapped, involving areas such as personal data security, scams and kids safety.
A computer virus is a malware program designed to infect and compromise computers. Being infected can cause a big loss of data and time: 82% of records are worried about it. Although viruses don't represent a money or personal threat it is, yet, the most dreaded fear.
Spam is considered to be unsolicited e‑mails sent from electronic messaging systems. It generally consists in advertising for some product sent to a mailing list or newsgroup. Almost 68% of interviewed are concerned about e‑mail spam.
Privacy concerns exist wherever personally identifiable information or other sensitive data are collected and stored — in digital form or otherwise. Privacy is one of the biggest problems in this new electronic age.
Phishing has become one of the major issues in the recent times that have sent across an alarm for the Internet users. E‑mail or other form of communications are sent to stole credit card information, account details, usernames and password.
Threats in the Internet are not exclusively related to personal data. Using credit cards on the web without paying enough attention can lead to potential scamming risks — which means a very big loss of money without even notice. 56% of interviewed records are concerned about fraudolent use of credit cards.
Internet is easily accessible for everyone, especially for digital native children who are constantly in danger of finding inappropriated or unsuitable materials. 66% of interviewed are worried about kids safety on the web.
56% of Italian population uses the Internet. Though there are lot of people who is regularly online, the level of fear is pretty high. What are the factors that influence this trend? At first glance there's a pattern based on geography — chart sideways — where South is clearly more worried than the North.
In the following visualizations we're going to observe in details how the location can influence the fear and what are the other factors of the level of concern.
The chart below shows how the concern changes depending on the location, from North to South. Southern regions are generally more scared than the northern ones, with a common pattern for all the six different categories.
The chart below shows in detail both the geographic trend and the different
behaviour of men and women who stated that are very concerned about each fear.
Females are generally more concerned than males, with stronger gaps in central regions.
The representation shows the link between the fear level and the educational level.
It is clear that the more you study, the more you fear each kind of threat.
Italian are mostly scared of the web. First we looked for a meaning into the data related to what a human being is: gender, age, hometown and level of education. Now we're going deeper: how the experiences and the previous memories can influence the fear?
The chart below analyzes whether the concerning revealed in the previous charts come from already occurred experiences related to the very same threats, or it's just an assumed fear with no obvious connections.