End user concern about security and privacy threats

End users are typically seen as the weakest link in ensuring security and privacy in computing environments. Our own prior work suggested that end users may have difficulty differentiating between privacy/security problems and other hardware/software concerns. However, a survey of a broad group of internet users showed that, in fact, these users believe that they can not only differentiate between these two sets of concerns, but that in fact users are more concerned with security/privacy concerns than they are with other types of computer problems.