66 pc of online Indians are victims of cybercrime: study

MUMBAI, INDIA: More than 42 million people fell victim to cybercrime in the past twelve months, suffering approximately US $8 billion in direct financial losses, finds the latest Norton Cybercrime Report

The study was aimed at understanding how cybercrime affects consumers, and how the adoption and evolution of new technologies impacts people's security based on on self-reported experiences of more than 13,000 adults across 24 countries.

The 2012 edition of the Norton Cybercrime Report calculates the direct costs associated with global consumer cybercrime at US $110 billion over the past twelve months.

According to the Norton Cybercrime Report 2012, 66 percent of Indian online adults have been a victim of cybercrime in their lifetime. In the past 12 months 56 percent of online adults in India have experienced cybercrime, (more than 115,000 victims of cybercrime every day, 80 victims per minute and more than 1 per second) and the average direct financial cost per victim is US $192 up 18 percent over 2011 (US $163).

Globally, every second, 18 adults become a victim of cybercrime3, resulting in more than one-and-a-half million cybercrime victims each day. With losses totaling an average of US $197 per victim across the world in direct financial costs 4, in the past twelve months, an estimated 556 million5 adults across the world experienced cybercrime. This figure represents 46 percent of online adults who have been victims of cybercrime in the past twelve months, on par with the findings from 2011 (45 percent).

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Changing Face of Cybercrime

This year?s survey shows an increase in “new” forms of cybercrime compared to last year, such as those found on social networks or mobile devices6 - a sign that cybercriminals are starting to focus their efforts on these increasingly popular platforms.

In India, one in three online adults (32 percent) has been a victim of either social or mobile cybercrime in the last 12 months, and 51 percent of social network users have been victims of social cybercrime, specifically:

• 22 percent of social network users reported someone had hacked into their profile and pretended to be them.
• 15 percent of social network users said they?d fallen victim to a scam or fake link on social network platforms.
• While 83 percent believe that cybercriminals are setting their sights on social networks, only around half (57 percent) actually use a security solution which protects them from social network threats and only 44 percent use the privacy settings to control what information they share, and with whom.
• Nearly half (44 percent) of mobile users received a text message from someone they didn?t know requesting that they click on an embedded link or dial an unknown number to retrieve a “voicemail”.

“Cybercriminals are changing their tactics to target fast growing mobile platforms and social networks where consumers are less aware of security risks,” says Effendy Ibrahim, Internet Safety Advocate and Director, Asia for Norton by Symantec. “This mirrors what we saw in this year?s Symantec Internet Security Threat Report7 which reported nearly twice the mobile vulnerabilities in 2011from the year before.”