Survey

TUAW: According to the results of a massive survey by Hunch.com, Mac people are frequently young, vegetarian city-dwellers who like modern art, liberal politics, and independent films. Meanwhile, Windows supporters tend to be older, more conservative, and more likely to compare talking about computers to “struggling with a foreign language.” Whether you’re collecting evidence for the Mac vs. Windows debate you have planned for the weekend or preparing for an appearance on Family Feud, Hunch’s results offer some fun and fascinating insights into the tastes and habits of Mac and PC users, from what TV shows they watch to what snacks will best satisfy their afternoon munchies. ...

A new study shows that Gmail users are more likely to be young, thin, career-minded men, while Yahoo! is more typically home to overweight, older women Web curator Hunch.com asked its 700,000 users which email service they use, as well as a series of questions about their lifestyles. With 75 million answers to work with, the site was able to discover some striking differences between users of Gmail, and those who have stuck with older web clients like Yahoo!, Hotmail, and AOL. For instance, Gmail users are more likely to be young, Yahoo! users are often extroverted, and AOL users have typically been in a relationship for more than ten years. Here are four other takeaways from the study: ...

The University of California, Berkeley, has found that more than half young adults have become more aware of Internet privacy issues than they were five years ago. That number is similar to Internet users their parents’ age or older. “In its telephone survey of 1,000 people, the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology at the University of California found that 88 percent of the 18- to 24-year-olds it surveyed last July said there should be a law that requires Web sites to delete stored information. And 62 percent said they wanted a law that gave people the right to know everything a Web site knows about them.” ...

Rob VandenBrink has written a piece on the SANS web site Diary (“The Many Paths to Security Awareness”) with an interesting take on the very large topic of computer security awareness. “Security Awareness does not mean the same thing to everyone in a company,” sums up his point. “From a Security Awareness perspective the blanket term ‘end user’ grows to encompass many audiences – not only folks with basic desks and phones, but developers, senior managers, salespeople, engineers, health-care professionals, all kinds of people with different concerns, different goals, and a different set of reasons/excuses for exceptions to one thing or another,” he wrote. ...