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The number of mobile users worldwide continues to increase steadily with no apparent sign of abating. The number of mobile subscriptions worldwide is 8.16 billion globally as of November 2018 (ITU, 2018). Due to a number of reasons, such as multiple devices or multiple SIM card ownership, the actual number of subscribers is approximately 5.6 billion globally according to the Ericsson Mobility Report (Möller, 2018). In recent years, users have started to exchange their classical mobile phones for smartphones with Internet access, and application downloading and installing capabilities. By the end of 2018, there were 5.29 billion active mobile broadband subscriptions (ITU, 2018). In the coming years, the smartphone users’ growth will be mostly driven by the widespread availability of affordable smartphones, accessible Wi-Fi coverage and expanding 4G and 5G networks. By 2024, the number of mobile broadband subscriptions is forecasted to reach 8.4 billion (Möller, 2018).
(Park & Chen, 2007) argue that perceived ease-of-use (EoU) is one of the factors positively affecting the attitude of users to use smartphones; a similar finding is reported in (Chi & Tsai, 2017), where EoU has a considerable influence on user attitude hence behavior intention; note that EoU in their and our works addresses the same point, the degree how easy to use. Smartphones, which are actually a type of mobile computer, continue to proliferate worldwide. EoU is one of the basic characteristics of such a successful adoption of smartphones. They are simple, handy, convenient and comfortable; hence, users appear to be enamored by them. They download and install applications easily and do their intended operations quickly with several finger gestures.
Users can use their smartphones for different purposes and many of them may not be critical in terms of security or privacy. However, this may not always be the case. For example, a smartphone user can trade his assets in stock, use banking services, send and receive e-mails and so on. With the increasing number of such sites and accounts, we naturally have many credentials. This leads to forgetting logon names and passwords, especially for less frequently used accounts. Some users solve this problem by registering the same password for every account. Additionally, we use mobile applications with options such as “remember me” for the logon details. Another work-around is to save logon details on browsers, applications and mobile devices. In addition, our mobile phones are usually connected thanks to high bandwidth GSM coverage and we remain continuously logged on to social media and e-mail accounts. All these implementations provide practical solutions for users to make their activities easier and faster. Despite the speed advantage, a mobile device, on which the user is already logged in and applications can complete log on details, can be risky. If a user loses his smartphone, his critical information may become available to others since for many applications, all required settings are already recorded, user account information is pre-stored and security mechanisms are neglected.
As mentioned above, EoU is one of the main motivators for smartphone users. Because EoU is a considerably large subject to investigate, we have limited our scope to that of storing credentials of basic online activities and always keeping the mobile phone connected to the Internet. Within this scope, we found that security mechanisms generally make systems more difficult for users to use. For example, using a complex password is better for high security; however, it is difficult for the user to recall it and enter it. Therefore, there is a trade-off between high security and EoU for all IT systems. It is an open question as to whether smartphone users sacrifice security for EoU and speed on smartphones. Considering this, the main objective of this study is to test the weight of EoU and speed against risks associated with neglecting security in mobile phone usage.