Wi-Fi Adoption and Security in Hong Kong

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Table 2 below illustrates the frequency distribution and percentage composition of the age of the respondents.Of the 200 respondents (100%) who answered the question, the majority (40.0%) of them are aged between 26 and 35.Those who are in the 46-to 55-year-old bracket (17.5%) come second, which is followed by those who are in the 36-to 45-year-old bracket (14.5%).As regards their marital status, all respondents answered the question and majority of them are single (67.5% of 135 out of 200) and 65 (32.5%) are married (Table 3).All of the respondents answered the question regarding the industry sectors in which they are engaged.Of the 200 respondents, only 28.5% (57 out of 200) of them engage in the IT-related sectors, while the rest (143 out of 200 or 71.5%) engage in sectors unrelated to IT (Table 4).Table 5 below illustrates the frequency distribution and percentage composition of the education profile of the respondents.The frequency distribution shows that the majority of the respondents (45.0% or 90 out of 200) have a bachelor degree.They are followed by those with an associate degree (28.0% or 56 out of 200) and those with a postgraduate degree (15.0% or 30 out of 200).A total of 200 respondents answered the question concerning their places of residence.Table 6 below illustrates the frequency distribution and percentage composition of the place of residence profiles of the respondents.The frequency distribution shows that the majority of the respondents live in Kowloon and the New Territories, representing 33.5% (67 out of 200) of the respondents respectively.Those who live on Hong Kong Island (28.5% or 57 out of 200) come third.Only 4.5% (9 out of 200) of the respondents live on outlying islands.Table 7 and Figure 1 below illustrate the frequency distribution and percentage composition of the Wi -Fi experience profile of the respondents.The frequency distribution shows that the majority of the respondents (90.5% or 181 out of 200) have more than 2 years' of experience using Wi-Fi.Comparing with the 81.1% recorded last year, the percentage of respondents with more than 2 years' of experience using Wi-Fi has increased 9.5 percentage points, an indication of the growing popularity of Wi-Fi usage in Hong Kong.
Those with 1-2 years' of experience (4.0% or 8 out of 200) come second.3.0% (6 out of 200) of the respondents have six months' to one year's of experience using Wi-Fi and 1.5% (3 out of 200) of them have used it for less than six months.Only a small percentage (1.0%or 2 out of 200) of the respondents ha ve never used Wi-Fi before.

Types of Wi-Fi Network for Internet Access
The types of Wi-Fi network for Internet access are shown in Table 9 and Figure 3.The majority of the respondents (89.5%) use Wi-Fi at home, which is more or less same as the 88.4% reported last year.The number of people who use Wi-Fi in office (67.8%) and on campus (31.7%) increase considerably by 14.8% and 12.0% respectively (the corresponding figures in 2015 were 53.0% and 19.7% respectively).On the contrary, those who use commercial and government free Wi-Fi hotspots drop about 5 percentage points respectively.The percentage of respondents who said they use commercial Wi-Fi hotspots drop from 45.4% of last year to 39.2% this year (a reduction of 5.2 percentage points), and the percentage of respondents who use government free Wi-Fi hotspots reduce from last year's 54.2% to 49.3% this year (reduction of 4.9 percentage points).The percentage of respondents using Wi-Fi in business districts (45.2% of this year vs. 45.5% of last year) and the percentage of respondents using Free Wi-Fi hotspots under the Wi-Fi.HK brand (22.1% of this year vs. 23.2% of last year) remain more or less same as the corresponding figures of the year before.

Wi-Fi Using Experience Profiles
Table 10 below shows the Wi-Fi using experience profiles of the respondents in terms of the seven main types of Wi-Fi network.It is clear that the more experienced users (those with more than two years of experience of using Wi-Fi) access the Internet using Wi-Fi at home (93.4%),Wi-Fi in office (65.2%),GovWi-Fi (48.6%), and Wi-Fi in business districts (47.0%), while all of the less experienced users (those with less than six months of experience of using Wi-Fi) gain access to the Internet through Wi-Fi hotspots provided by commercial service providers and the GovWi-Fi network.

Marital Status Profiles
Figure 12 below shows a breakdown of the use of the seven main types of Wi-Fi Internet network by marital status.Although the majority of the respondents, both single and married, use Wi-Fi at home (91.11% of the single and 84.62% of the married) and in office (65.93% of the single and 55.38% of the married), there are more single than married people using Wi-Fi accesses across all the seven main types.About half of the respondents use GovWi-Fi public hotspots (50.37% of the single and 46.15% of the married).More than one-third of the respondents use Wi-Fi in business districts (48.15% of the single and 38.46% of the married) and Wi-Fi hotspots provided by commercial service providers (40.74% of the single and 35.38% of the married).About one-fifth of the respondents use Free Wi-Fi hotspots under the Wi-Fi.HK brand (23.70% of the single and 18.45% of the married).As regards the respondents using Wi-Fi on campus, there are considerable difference between the single (37.78%) and married (18.45%) respondents.

Age Profiles
As there are only 2 respondents in the "15-18 years old" age group and 3 persons in the "over 65 year old" age group, the number is too small for yielding any useful insight hence these two groups are excluded from the analysis.
Table 13 below shows a breakdown of the use of the seven main types of Wi-Fi Internet network by the 5 remaining age groups.Using Wi-Fi at home (with a share ranging from 81.5% to 96.6%), using Wi-Fi in office (with a share ranging from 48.2% to 77.1%) and GovWi-Fi public hotspots (with a share ranging from 46.3% to 57.1%) are the three most used Internet access conduits across all these age groups.

Education Profiles
As there is only 1 respondent in the "Junior Secondary" educational level group, the response from this group is too small for yielding any useful insight and hence it is excluded from the analysis.
Table 14 below shows a breakdown of the use of the seven main types of Wi-Fi Internet network by the 4 remaining educational level groups.Using Wi-Fi at home (with a share ranging from 85.6% to 95.7%), using Wi-Fi in office (with a share ranging from 57.8% to 73.9%) and GovWi-Fi public hotspots (with a share ranging from 40.0% to 60.9%) are the three most used Internet access conduits across all these age groups.
It is notable that the respondents with lower education level (Senior Secondary School and Associate Degree) tend to use more free Wi-Fi services.60.9% of the respondents with senior secondary school education use GovWi-Fi public hotspots, while only 40.0% of the bachelor degree holders use the same; 34.8% of the respondents with senior secondary school education use Free Wi-Fi hotspots under the Wi-Fi.HK brand, while only 16.7% of the bachelor degree holders and postgraduate degree holders use the same.The huge differences in using which conduit of access to the Internet indicates that both GovWi-Fi public hotspots and free Wi-Fi hotspots under the Wi-Fi.HK brand play a helpful role in narrowing the digital gap in Hong Kong.

Place of Residence Profiles
Table 15 below shows a breakdown of the use of the seven main types of Wi-Fi Internet network by the 4 places of residence groups.Using Wi-Fi at home (with a share ranging from 87.7% to 91.0%), using Wi-Fi in office (with a share ranging from 57.8% to 73.9%) are the most used Internet access conduits across all age groups.However, it is noteworthy that, other than using Wi-Fi at home, respondents living on outlaying islands also use free GovWi-Fi public hotspots for accessing the Internet (44.4%) and only 11.1% of them use Wi-Fi in office.
On the other hand, using Wi-Fi in office ranks second as the major Internet access conduit for people living on Hong Kong Island (64.9%),Kowloon (56.7%) and the New Territories (71.6%).

Use of Wi-Fi Network
Table 16 shows the kinds of device used by the respondents to connect to Wi-Fi network.Amongst the 199 respondents who use Wi-Fi network, the majority of them use smartphones (88.5%) and personal computers (61.5%) to access Wi-Fi.A little over half of them (54.5%)use tablets, such as iPads, to access Wi-Fi.Only very few respondents (2.0%) use PDAs to access Wi-Fi.As shown in Table 17, amongst the 199 respondents who use Wi-Fi to access the Internet, only 1.5% of them are not users of smartphones.They, instead, used personal computers, tablets or other portable devices to connect to the Wi-Fi network.For those who use smartphones, the majority of them use Android smartphones (58.8%).However, it is noteworthy that the percentage share in this year has dropped by 16.3 percentage points from the 75.1% recorded in 2015.This share of smartphone users is followed by those who use Apple iPhones(43.2%), which shows an increase of 16.3 percentage points from the 26.9% in 2015.The percentage of the respondents using smartphones other than an Android or iPhone is small (2.5%) and is on the decline (from 5.0% in 2015 to 2.5% in 2016).As shown in Table 18 and Figure 4, amongst the 199 respondents who use Wi-Fi to access the Internet, their Wi-Fi usage pattern shows a slight deviation from that reported last year.In this year (2016), the majority of the 199 respondents use Wi-Fi to obtain information from the Internet (78.4%).They are followed by those who use Wi-Fi to contact friends (70.4%).However, in the survey conducted last year (2015), the main use of Wi-Fi is to contact friends (76.6% in 2015), which is followed by those who use it for obtaining information from the Internet (75.1% in 2015).
Meanwhile, the percentage of respondents who need to use Wi-Fi to conduct activities online (63.3%) and complete their work (55.3%) are both on the rise when compared with the figures reported last year (53.2% and 48.3% respectively).The percentage increases are 10.1 percentage points and 7.00 percentage points respectively.Figure 19 below shows a breakdown of the reasons of using Wi-Fi network by gender.Among the 199 Wi-Fi users surveyed, it is revealed that male and female respondents have rather similar Wi-Fi usage patterns.Using Wi-Fi to contact friends, using Wi-Fi to obtain information from the Internet and using Wi-Fi to conduct activities online are the 3 most cited uses of Wi-Fi network in both groups.However, there are minor differences.The use of Wi-Fi to contact friends takes up the biggest share of use among the males (73.6%), while the same use only ranks second (65.5%) among the females.Meanwhile using Wi-Fi to obtain information from the Internet is the most common reason of using Wi-Fi for the female group (76.9%), while the same only ranks second (71.1% ) among the males.The male group reports a slightly higher percentage of respondents who claim that they must use Wi-Fi to complete work than the female group (57.0% for the males and 52.6% for the females).Both groups have more or less the same percentage of respondents who claim that they must use Wi-Fi to support their learning (31.4% for the males and 32.1% for the females).Table 20 shows the activities conducted by the respondents while using the Wi-Fi network.Social networking (79.4%), checking and answering emails (77.4%), and searching for and downloading information (75.9%) are the 3 most common activities conducted among the 199 respondents.About half of the respondents used Wi-Fi to play on-line games (50.8%), conduct on-line purchasing (50.8%) and download or buy mobile Apps (48.7%).30.2% of the respondents use Wi-Fi to download/buy ringtones, images, music and only about a quarter of the respondents (25.6%) use Wi-Fi to perform investment activities, e.g., on-line brokerage (30.2%).6 below show how mobile messaging Apps are used among the 199 Wi-Fi users.It is noticed that the percentages across all mobile messaging Apps used record an increase as compared to the findings last year and the percentages of increases are considerable (ranging from 4.1% to 10.4%) in general except that only a 1.1 percentage points increase is recorded with respect to textual communication.Although the percentage increase is low, similar to last year, textual communication is the most used mobile messaging Apps this year (84.9% in 2016) as well as the year before (83.8% in 2015).Textual plus emoticon is the second most used (78.4 in 2016 and 68.0% in 2015) mobile Apps and the people using this kind of messaging Apps is on the increase (by 10.4 percentage points).Group chat (70.9% in 2016 and 62.4% in 2015) and voice messaging (57.3% in 2016 and 49.2% in 2015) are also important mobile messaging Apps and the percentages of the relevant users are on the rise (by 8.5 and 8.1 percentage points respectively).Although the primary function of mobile phone is voice communication, the percentage of respondents using mobile messaging Apps for voice communication is on the rise, but still remains as the least amongst the various messaging functionalities for two consecutive years (43.2% in 2016 and 39.1% in 2015).Table 23 and Figure 7 below show the percentage of online time that the respondents spent on using mobile messaging Apps.After benchmarking the numbers with last year's figures, it is noted that the respondents this year have a rather different profile with regard to the percentage of online time spent on mobile messaging.Last year, we found that the majority (33.0%) of the respondents used 10-25% of their online time for mobile messaging while this year, the majority (34.7%) of the respondents use 26-50% of their online time for mobile messaging.
Those who use less than 10% of their online time for mobile messaging have reduced considerably (by 13.4 percentage points) from 23.5% in 2015 to 10.1% in 2016.On the contrary, those who use more than 75% of their online time for mobile messaging increase considerably (by 5.0 percentage points) from 8.0% in 2015 to 13.0% in 2016 (7.5% of respondents use 76-90% of their online time for mobile messaging and 5.5% of respondents use more than 90% of their online time to do the same).This indicates the growing number of people spending longer and longer time on mobile messaging.Table 25 below shows the percentage of online time the respondents spent on social networking Apps and the numbers are benchmarked with last year's figures.It is noticeable that the respondents this year have a rather different profile with respect to the percentage of online time spent on social networking.Last year, the majority (70.5%) of the respondents used less than 25% of their online time for social networking (35.5% of them used less than 10% and 35.0% of them use 10-25% of their online time), while this year, the majority (61.6%) of the respondents use 10-50% of their online time for social networking (30.8% of them use 10-25% and the same 30.8% of them use 26-50% of their online time).The number of those who use less than 10% of their online time for social networking have reduced considerably (16.6 percentage points) from 35.5% in 2015 to 18.9% in 2016.On the contrary, those who use more than half of their online time for social networking increase considerably (8.5 percentage points) from 11.0% in 2015 to 19.5% in 2016 (13.5% of respondents use 51-75% of their online time for social networking and 6.0% of respondents use more than 75% of their online time to do the same).This indicates that more and more people are spending longer and longer time on social networking.

Internet, Free Wi-Fi and E-Learning
Table 26 shows the attitude toward e-Learning of our respondents.It is found that the majority of respondents (76.9% or 153 out of 200) use e-Learning and the majority of them say that they will encourage people to use e-Learning (86.9% or 173 out of 200).When being asked whether they believe e-Learning can increase an adult's learning interest in general, the majority (75.0%) of the respondents agree and only a small percentage (4.5%) of them think otherwise.When being asked whether they believe e-Learning can increase secondary school students' learning interest, the majority (78.5%) of the respondents agree but only a small percentage (5.0%) of them do not think so.When being asked whether they believe e-Learning can increase primary school students' learning interest, the majority (80.0%) of the respondents agree and only a small percentage (5.5%) of them disagree.
From the above data, we can conclude that the respondents believe that e-Learning can increase the learning interest of both adults and students.From the small differences observed, our respondents generally believe that e-Learning will benefit younger people (80.0% for primary school student) more than adults (75.0%).

E-Learning for Adults
Table 28 below shows how e-Learning helps adults improve their learning interests.The majority (69.0%) of the respondents believe that e-Learning enhances interest in learning and only a small percentage (7.0%) of them think otherwise.A large majority (92.0%) of the respondents believe that e-Learning makes their information collection easier and, among them, 36.0%strongly agree.Only a small percentage (2.0%) of the respondents disagree.A large majority (87.5%) of the respondents believe that e-Learning broaden their horizons and, among them, 29.0% strongly agree.Only a small percentage (1.5%) of the respondents do not believe so.The majority (82.5%) of the respondents believe that e-Learning facilitates communication with their fellow students and only a small percentage (4.0%) of them think otherwise.The majority (81.0%) of the respondents believe that e-Learning facilitates communication with their tutors and only a small percentage (5.5%) of them do not think so.The majority (81.0%) of the respondents believe that e-Learning enhances an adult's self-learning ability but a small percentage (4.0%) of them think otherwise.

E-Learning for Secondary School Students
Table 29 below shows how e-Learning helps secondary school students improve their learning interests.The majority (81.8%) of the respondents believe that e-Learning enhances secondary school students' interest in learning but only a small percentage (3.5%) of them do not think so.A large majority (90.9%) of the respondents believe that e-Learning makes secondary school students' information collection easier and, among them, 31.0%strongly agree.Only a small percentage (2.0%) of the respondents do not believe e-Learning helps them in this way.The majority (77.7%) of the respondents believe that e-Learning broaden a secondary school student's horizons and, among them, 23.4% strongly believe so.Only a small percentage (4.0%) of the respondents disagree.The majority (81.3%) of the respondents believe that e-Learning facilitates secondary school students' communication with their fellow students and only a small percentage (6.6%) of them think otherwise.The majority (77.7%) of the respondents believe that e-Learning facilitates secondary school students' communication with their tutors and only a small percentage (8.6%) of them disagree.The majority (80.2%) of the respondents believe that e-Learning enhances secondary school students' self-learning ability but a small percentage (5.5%) of them disagree.

E-Learning for Primary School Students
Table 30 below shows how e-Learning helps primary school students improve their learning interests.The majority (81.8%) of the respondents believe that e-Learning enhances a primary school student's interest in learning but a small percentage (6.0%) of them disagree.The majority (81.2%) of them believe that e-Learning makes primary school students' information collection easier but a small percentage (6.6%) of them disagree.
The majority (83.7%) of the respondents believe that e-Learning broaden primary school students' horizons, those who disagree constitute only a small percentage of 5.0%.The majority (73.1%) of the respondents believe that e-Learning facilitates primary school students' communication with their fellow students but a small percentage (11.7%) of them disagree.The majority (70.4%) of the respondents believe that e-Learning facilitates primary school students' communication with their tutors but a small percentage (11.7%) of them do not think so.The majority (75.7%) of the respondents believe that e-Learning enhances primary school students' self-learning ability but a small percentage (9.1%) of them disagree.
Although the respondents generally believe that e-Learning can benefit primary school students, when the data is benchmarked with those for secondary school students and adults, it is obvious that the respondents believe that the benefits will be greater to secondary school students and adults than to primary school students.

Free Wi-Fi and e-Learning
Table 31 and Figure 10 below summarize the perceptions of the respondents on whether Free Wi-Fi can help people learn online or not.Respondents in general have a very positive view on the contribution of Free Wi-Fi on e-Learning.The majority (82.0%) of the respondents believe that Free Wi-Fi helps them learn online and only a small percentage (6.5%) of them disagree.The majority (82.9%) of the respondents believe that Free Wi-Fi helps students learn online and only a small percentage (6.0%) of them disagree.The majority (81.5%) of the respondents believe that Free Wi-Fi helps their fellow citizens learn online but only a small percentage (6.0%) of them disagree.Figure 10.Free Wi-Fi and e-Learning When being asked whether they are worried that their personal information could be leaked while using e-Learning platforms, 188 out of the 200 respondents answered this question.Amongst the 188 respondents, the majority of them (77.13% of 145 out of 188) express concerns over the possible leakage of personal information due to access to e-Learning platforms.

Wi-Fi Tethering
Last year, we observed that 2.0% of the respondents didn't know what is tethering and didn't know that they could use their smartphones as Wi-Fi hotspots to share Wi-Fi signal.As shown in table 32, this year, among the 199 people responded to our survey, all of them know what is tethering.
Similar to last year, when being asked whether they have ever shared their smartphones as a Wi-Fi Hotspot, i.e., Wi-Fi tethering, the majority (66.8%) of the respondents answer in the affirmative but 33.2% of the respondents answer in the negative.However, that percentage of respondents who claimed they have shared their smartphones as a Wi-Fi hotspot increase considerably by 13.8 percentage points to 66.8% from last year's figure of 53.0%.

Wi-Fi at Home
Table 33 below shows the types of Wi-Fi standard the respondents use at home and the data are benchmarked with the 2015 findings.It shows that the majority (51.0%) of the home Wi-Fi users do not know what kinds of Wi-Fi standard they are using.The number is 8.4 percentage points higher than the 42.6% reported last year.One of the reasons may be there are many different Wi-Fi standards and less experienced users might get confused.
For those who know the standards they are using, most of them (20.9%)use 802.11n.Those who use 802.11ac (15.3%), which is the most marketed standard for new routers selling in Hong Kong, rank second.The shares of home Wi-Fi users who use older standards, i.e., 802.11a standard, 802.11b standard and 802.11g, are 6.1%, 8.2% and 14.3% respectively.All of them show a decrease when compared with the figures last year.Table 34 below shows the types of Wi-Fi encryptions use by the respondents at home and the data are benchmarked with the 2015 findings.A total of 188 respondents answered the questions and 42.0% of them do not know what kinds of Wi-Fi security they were using.The number is slightly higher than 33.2% reported last year.For those who know what kinds of Wi-Fi security they are using, 4.8% (9 out of 188) of them do not use any Wi-Fi encryptions on their home Wi-Fi networks, which is a slight improvement (1.1 percentage points) compared to the 5.9% last year.For those home Wi-Fi users who use Wi-Fi security, the majority of them (33.5%)use "WPA/WPA2 using AES".They are followed by those who use "WPA/WPA2 using TKIP" (15.4%).Only 4.8% (2015 was 7.4%) of the home Wi-Fi users use WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy).Table 35 shows that the types of Wi-Fi authentication protocol the respondents use at home and the data are subsequently benchmarked with the 2015 findings.It shows that a total of 39.3% of the Wi-Fi users have no idea of the kinds of authentication protocols they are using at home.The number is 16.5 percentage points higher than the 22.8% of the respondents who said so last year.For those who know the kinds of Wi-Fi authentication protocol they are using, the majority (34.7%) of them use WPA2-Personal (aka WPA-PSK or Pre-Shared Key mode).They are followed by those who are using WPA-Personal (20.9%).Only a small percentage of the respondents use WPA-Enterprise (3.1%) or WPA2-Enterprise (2.0%) at home.

Discussion
The advent of "Internet of things" (IoT) has changed how people interact with other people as well as devices, animals and objects around them (Wortmann & Flü chter, 2015).IoT is not only a buzzword, but also a major focus of research and business on a global scale.To connect us with the "things" or "everything" around us, Wi-Fi is the most obvious conduit.Since the beginning of the Wi -Fi age, this technology has not only changed how people interact but completely transformed our way of life.It makes doing business, managing our daily routines and personal lives easier, more mobile and can be conducted at a lower costs both in terms of time and money.With Wi-Fi and the myriad of supporting devices and applications, business, work and personal affairs can be conducted from anywhere, anytime.Wi-Fi keeps people in sync with what is going on both within and outside their social circle and has become an integral part of our daily lives.
Setting out to examine the use of Wi-Fi in Hong Kong, the knowledge and knowledge gap in Wi-Fi security, the status of Wi -Fi connectivity Hong Kong and the possibility of Wi-Fi as a facilitator of e-Learning, this report seeks to empirically assessment the user perceptions on Wi-Fi usage with a view of providing evidence-based suggestions to both commercial and government stakeholders in Hong Kong (HKSAR Government, 2015).

Wi-Fi Usage
It is revealed that the majority of the respondents use Wi-Fi network (99.5%) both in-home (89.5%) and in office (67.8%).Close to half (49.3%) of the respondents use free GovWi-Fi public hotspots to connect the Internet.
It is observed that, comparing with the year before, the respondents this year spend more time on Wi-Fi to access the Internet in general.The majority of the respondents (71.0%) consider themselves as frequent users of Wi-Fi, representing an increase of 8.5 percentage points over the figure of last year.Meanwhile, only 4.5% of the respondents said they seldom use or have never used Wi-Fi, accounting for about a half of those who said so (10.5%) in the 2015 study.
It is also revealed that 100.0% of the new Wi-Fi users, i.e., those who reported that they have used Wi-Fi for less than 6 months, start their Wi-Fi usage experience with free public Wi-Fi provided by the government and Wi-Fi hotspots provided by commercial service providers.Moreover, for the users with a half to one year Wi-Fi usage experience, 66.67% of them use GovWi-Fi public hotspots and half of them (50%) use Wi-Fi hotspots provided by commercial service providers.These findings highlight the importance of public Wi-Fi, especially those provided for free, to first time users to get started with the experience of staying connected while on the move.
Our study reveals that people with a lower level of education tend to use more free GovWi-Fi public hotspots.This finding highlights the importance of free Wi-Fi in narrowing down the digital gap.Contrary to previous two studies, this study shows that aside from education level and Wi-Fi usage experience, other factors, such as gender, marital status and age differences do not have an obvious effect on the respondents' pattern of Wi-Fi network usage.
For those who use smartphones for Wi-Fi connection, the majority of them use Android phones (58.8%), while the number of Apple i-phone users have also increased, i.e., by 16.3 percentage points to 43.2% over that of last year.The majority of the respondents use their Wi-Fi enabled devices to obtain information from the Internet (78.4%), to conduct activities online (63.3%) and to complete their work (55.3%), all these three types of use of Wi-Fi indicate a notable increase ((ranging from 3.3 to 10.1 percentage points increase) than those reported last year.Again, contrary to the findings in the previous two studies, gender difference does not have a substantial effect on reasons underlying the use of Wi-Fi connection.The most performed activities online via Wi-Fi connection are social networking (79.4%), checking and answering emails (77.4%) and searching for and downloading information (75.9%).

Use of Wi-Fi for Mobile Messaging and Social Networking
The study shows that mobile messaging and social networking have become an integral part of people's lives and more and more people are conducting messaging and networking activities through Wi-Fi.It is observed that WhatsApp, WeChat and LINE are the 3 most used mobile messaging Apps used and nearly all of our respondents (95.0%) are users of WhatsApp.Mobile messaging Apps are used by the respondents for a wide variety of purposes, in particular, for textual communication (84.9%), textual plus emoticon communication (78.4%), group chats (70.9%) and voice messaging (57.3%).All these usages have reported a considerable increase (ranging from 1.1 to 10.4 percentage points) comparing with the figures last year.Correspondingly, the amounts of time that the respondents spent on mobile messaging has also increased, 29.1% of the respondents spent more than half of their online time on mobile messaging, which is 7.6 percentage points more than the 21.5% reported last year.
The use of social networking Apps reveals a pattern similar to that of mobile messaging Apps.It is observed that facebook and Instagram are the two most used social networking Apps amongst our respondents.Nearly all (89.9%) of our respondents use facebook.Only 7.5% of our respondents claimed that they are not using any social networking Apps.The share of this particular group of non-users drop 2.9 percentage points comparing with the rate last year.The amounts of time spent on social networking also hike this year, with 19.5% of the respondents claimed that they spend more than half of their online time on social networking, an 8.5 percentage points increase over the 11.0% reported last year.

Wi-Fi and Security Measures
With the proliferation of mobile devices and widespread adoption of cloud storage, Wi-Fi tethering has now become increasingly popular in Hong Kong.The study shows that Wi-Fi tethering increases steadily from 50.0% reported 3 year ago, 53.0% last year to 66.8% this year.This finding indicates that Hong Kong people are embracing Wi-Fi tethering, a technology which enables them to use low cost Wi-Fi-only tablets to connect to the Internet while on the go.
Nowadays smartphones are serving as a common Wi-Fi "hotspot" which allows users to share and gain access to Internet connection by a simply click of a button.However, this type of convenience also comes with a potential security risk to the people who share and use the Wi-Fi connection (Khoula et al., 2016).Therefore, Wi-Fi users have to be reminded not to use unknown Wi-Fi connections as there is a potential danger of giving access to hackers to obtain important personal information including emails or passwords which could therefore give culprits access to bank details or any other data that you share or transmit.Greater efforts must be made to educate users about the potential risks of Wi-Fi tethering and what are the proper security measures to be adopted to ensure safe Wi-Fi tethering functionality.
Other than Wi-Fi tethering, home Wi-Fi routers may pose an even higher security risk because home Wi-Fi routers are always on.This gives hackers much more time to hack into the Wi-Fi connection if they want to do so.It is surprised to note that the majority (51.0%) of the respondents have no idea of what kinds of Wi-Fi standard they are using at home.This finding shows that there is a big room for improvement in respect of promoting Wi-Fi security to the general public.Both the government and commercial service providers must take the lead to promote Wi-Fi security both in-home and in public venues and areas.Although the study shows that the percentage of people using older Wi-Fi standard keeps dropping, it is noteworthy that 8.2% and 6.1% of the respondents are still using 802.11a and 802.11b respectively.One of the explanations could be that they find changing their Wi-Fi routers difficult and hence are reluctant to do so.
When being asked what kind of Wi-Fi encryptions they are using at home, it is found that 42.0% of the respondents cannot answer and 4.8% of them say they do not have any encryption in their home Wi-Fi network.
When being asked what kind of Wi-Fi authentication protocols they are using at home, 39.3% of the respondents cannot answer and 60.7% of the respondents say they are using WPA/WPA2 based authentication protocols.

Wi-Fi Accessibility
Similar to the last 3 reports, inadequate Wi-Fi access points, inadequate bandwidth and unstable service quality continue to top the list of problems that frustrate Wi-Fi users in Hong Kong.These problems are found in both public Wi-Fi access services run by commercial service providers and those provided by the HKSAR Government.However, unlike the last 3 reports, the study this year found that complaints on inadequate

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Experience Profile of Respondents3.Use of Wi-Fi Network in Hong KongTable8and Figure2illustrate the frequency distribution and percentage composition of the amounts of time the respondents spent on accessing the Internet using Wi-Fi.Of the 200 respondents, 1 of them (0.5%) have never used Wi-Fi connection to access the Internet.Compared to the figures last year, 8.5 percentage points more respondents describe themselves as frequent Wi-Fi users (71.0% in 2016 vs. 62.5% in 2015).The percentage of the respondents who describe themselves as occasional user reduce from 27.0% in 2015 to 24.5% in 2016, and those who describe themselves as only using Wi-Fi network unless necessary reduce from 10.5% in 2015 to 4.0% in 2016.The reduction in the number of in light users and the increase in heavy Wi-Fi access users indicate that Wi-Fi has become a daily connection necessity to more and more people.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. Time Spent on Wi-Fi Connection

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Types of Wi-Fi Network Used for Internet Access

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. Why do you use Wi-Fi to access the Internet?

Figure 5 .
Figure 5. Activities conducted using the Wi-Fi network 4. Using Wi-Fi for Mobile Messaging and Social Networking 4.1 Mobile Messaging

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.Use of Mobile Messaging Apps Used

Figure 7 .
Figure 7. Percentage of Online Time for Mobile Messaging

Table 1 .
Gender of Respondents

Table 2 .
Age of Respondents

Table 3 .
Marital Status of Respondents

Table 4 .
Are you working in the IT related field?

Table 5 .
Education Profile of Respondents

Table 6 .
Place of Residence Profile of Respondents

Table 7 .
Experience Profile of Respondents

Table 8 .
Time Spent on Wi-Fi Connection

Table 9 .
Types of Wi-Fi Network Used for Internet Access

Table 10 .
Wi-Fi Using Experience in Terms of Wi-Fi Internet Network

Table 11 .
Use of Wi-Fi Network for Internet Access by Gender

Table 12 .
Use of Wi-Fi Network for Internet Access by Marital Status

Table 13 .
Use of Wi-Fi Network for Internet Access by Age

Table 14 .
Use of Wi-Fi Network for Internet Access by Educational Level

Table 15 .
Use of Wi-Fi Network for Internet Access by Place of Residence

Table 16 .
How do you access Wi-Fi?

Table 17 .
Are you a Smartphone user?

Table 18 .
Why do you use Wi-Fi to access the Internet?

Table 19 .
Reason of Using of Wi-Fi Network by Gender

Table 20 .
Activities conducted using the Wi-Fi network

Table 21
For those 199 Wi-Fi users who used mobile messaging, a large majority of them (95.0%)use WhatsApp, indicating a rising trend.This suggests that WhatsApp is the dominated mobile messaging App in Hong Kong.The second and third most popular Apps are WeChat (40.7%) and LINE (35.7%).The percentage of LINE users increases considerably by 9.3 percentage points, from last year's 26.4% to this year's 35.7%.Meanwhile the percentage of WeChat users reduces slightly by 2.6 percentage points, from last year's 43.3 % to this year's 40.7%.It is also noticeable that more and more Wi-Fi network users are using other mobile messaging Apps, such as Viber.The percentages of people using mobile messaging Apps other than WhatsApp, LINE and WeChat doubles as compared to the year before (increasing from 12.4% in 2015 to 25.1% in 2016).
below shows the types of mobile messaging Apps used by the respondents and the resulting figures are benchmarked with the percentages reported last year.Similar to last year, only a small percentage of respondents (1.5%) do not use mobile messaging and the percentage has dropped from the 4.0% reported last year to 1.5% this year.

Table 22 and
Figure

Table 22 .
Use of Mobile Messaging Apps Used

Table 23 .
Percentage of Online Time for Mobile MessagingTable24shows the types of social networking Apps use by the respondents and the figures are benchmarked with last year's findings.It is noticeable that the percentage of respondents who are not using any social networking Apps has reduced by 2.9 percentage points this year (from 10.4% in 2015 to 7.5% in 2016).Similar to last year, facebook is the most popular social networking Apps and the percentage of respondents using facebook have increased 11.8 percentage points (from 78.1 in 2015 to 89.9% in 2016).Instagram is the second most used social networking Apps among respondents for two consecutive years and the percentage of people using Instagram this year has more than doubled(from 19.9% in 2015 to 46.7% in 2016).Although the user increment is not as high as Instagram, the increase of percentage of LinkedIn users also rise considerably ( 11.2 percentage points), from 17.4% in 2015 to 28.6% in 2016.In addition, with the growing popularity of social networking Apps, more and more respondents are using other social networking Apps (from 8.5% in 2015 to 13.6% in 2016).Twitter is the only social network Apps that recorded a reduction in percentage of users amongst the respondents (from 13.9% in 2015 to 12.6% in 2016).

Table 24 .
Types of Social Networking Apps Used

Table 25 .
Percentage of Online Time for Social Networking Figure 8. Percentage of Online Time for Social Networking

Table 26 .
Respondents' Attitude toward e-Learning

Table 27
Figure 9. E-Learning and Learning Interest

Table 30 .
E-Learning for Primary School Students

Table 31 .
Free Wi-Fi and e-Learning

Table 32 .
Have you ever shared your Smartphone as a Wi-Fi Hotspot?

Table 33 .
Wi-Fi Standards Used by Home Wi-Fi Users

Table 34 .
Wi-Fi Encryptions Used by Home Wi-Fi Users

Table 35 .
Wi-Fi Authentication Protocols Used by Home Wi-Fi Users

Table 38 .
Table 36 below shows the respondents' comments and suggestions on the public Wi-Fi hotspots provided by commercial service providers and the data are benchmarked with those reported in 2015.Same as last year, unstable service quality (67.3% in 2016 and 62.9% in 2015), inadequate Wi-Fi access points (61.7% in 2016 and 60.9% in 2015) and inadequate bandwidth(43.9% in 2016 and 46.5% in 2015)are the top 3 comments given by the respondents.They are followed by inadequate transparency in service pricing (32.7%) and high service charges (25.0%).As shown in Table38below, a total of 195 respondents gave suggestions on where to install more Wi-Fi hotspots and their suggestions are shown in Table37below.The majority of the respondents suggest installing more Suggestion on places to install more Wi-Fi hotspots