Tag: mobile web

Mobile phones are used for internet access by half the Chinese population

| January 28, 2016

According to a recent report, approximately 620 million people in China use smartphone to go online.

A new official report from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) has said that around 620 million people in the country – about half of its population – use their mobile phones in order to access the web.

These figures were collected throughout last year and represented the statistics as of the end of December 2015.

This figure represents an increase of 63.03 million users of mobile phones for accessing the internet, last year. It is also a figure that represents about 90.1 percent of the total number of internet users in China, which is estimated to be 688 million. This helps to further illustrate the importance of mobile devices as a driver in the internet user population in China. Smartphones have allowed the country to achieve the highest internet using population in the world, by far, said the CNNIC.

That said, it is important to note that the users of those mobile phones experience the same online restrictions.

Mobile Phone Use in ChinaThe Chinese government imposes strict controls over the content that is permitted online. Despite the fact that e-commerce is among the core components of its efforts to convert its economy into one that is more consumer demand based, these regulations remain. In fact, the system currently in place has been called the “Great Firewall of China”, blocking out any content it has determined to be politically sensitive.

The CNNIC report showed that there are about 127 million people in China whose internet access is exclusively over mobile phones. Broad efforts have been made within the country in order to help to boost the internet coverage and, as a result, public services, the standard of living and e-commerce have all benefitted.

The statistics offered by the report have predicted that the number of people who are using mobile health, mobile wallets or online education over smartphones had reached the 152 million, 358 million and 110 million mark, respectively, last year. Furthermore, an estimated 96.6 million people in the country – that is, one in every 14 people in China – used a mobile device in order to call a cab in 2015.

Mobile security issue for children identified by recent study

| September 9, 2015

This project has determined that about half of websites and mobile apps share this personal info.

An international project focused on online and mobile security has now released the results of an analysis that it conducted on 1,494 apps and websites around the globe, and they determined that over half are collecting and sharing the personal information of children.

This issue may be very worrisome to parents who are increasingly allowing their children to use mobile apps.

In fact, among the apps and websites that were analyzed by the mobile security project, 67 percent were collecting the personal information of children. Moreover, 50 percent of the analyzed sites and applications were sharing the personal information that they collected from children with other organizations. The project was taken on by the Global Privacy Enforcement Network (GPEN). This analysis was conducted as a part of a broader annual privacy sweep and the numbers that they found with regards to what children were able to share with websites and apps were insightful.

This could represent a major mobile security issue of which parents had been previously unaware.

children mobile securityAmong the key findings of the analysis by the GPEN were the following:

• 71 percent provided no opportunity for parents or children to delete account information
• 67 percent of sites and mobile apps were collecting personal information from kids
• 58 percent presented the opportunity for a child to be redirected to another website
• 32 percent had implemented effective controls to restrict personal information collection from kids
• 50 percent shared with third parties the personal information collected from children
• 24 percent encouraged the involvement of parents
• 23 percent contained features that allowed for the uploading of pictures or videos
• 22 percent presented an opportunity for a child to enter his or her telephone number

The GPEN has opted not to publish the list of sites and apps that were studied in this mobile security analysis. That said, it has been underscored, the majority of sites and apps collect and share this information for the purpose of targeted advertising and not for dubious reasons. Equally, the high importance of teaching children about online and mobile privacy was also stressed.