Abstract:

Nowadays more and more services are delivered via the Internet. Users can find there not only entertainment or news but also financial services, shopping, virtual office, government platforms and many others that contain vulnerable data, including financial and personal ones. To examine how well users are protecting their data and access to them, a survey was conducted. In the era of dynamic growth of cyber-attacks, it is very important to keep a good level of security. All the people surveyed claimed to use the Internet every day, and to use services containing vulnerable data. Because of this, they are expected to keep a high level of security of their accounts in various services, but it is also well known that there are many successful attacks against experienced users. That triggered the authors to examine the influence of user education and experience on access protection. In the study a thesis was put forward: user experience and education has an influence on the level of security of accounts accessed in the network.

To verify the thesis, three working hypotheses were formulated:
H1. Experience and education influence the level of security when using network services.
H2. An excessive number of accounts in various services reduces the level of security of login data.
H3. Frequent use of social media and instant messengers reduces users' alertness.

To confirm these hypotheses a group of 96 people were interviewed. Analysis of the results obtained revealed that only 45% of the people interviewed are using unique passwords for various services. The rest of the group declare that they have the same password to at least a few services. That seems to be very important because of the number of accounts possessed by users – 70% of the surveyed declared to have many accounts. Only 30% claimed to have fewer than 15 accounts. These results varied depending on the group, but no clear tendency was visible. Moreover, quite a significant group of people was identified to be prone to social engineering attacks. 7,5% of users would be willing to provide their data in a situation that could be part of a social engineering attack. Over 27% of them declared to verify the interlocutor in a suspicious situation, but they were unable to indicate an effective method of verification. The results obtained reveal that well-educated and experienced users generally feel safe while using the Internet, even if such security is only illusory.

Keywords:

Access, protection, security, Internet.