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When comedian Robin Williams committed suicide, there was a link to a supposed goodbye video being circulated online. Lots of his fans clicked on the link. In reality, there was no video; instead, people were downloading malware onto their computers or mobile phones.
“This (being fooled into downloading malware) is a big problem in India and globally,” says Fran Rosch, Executive VP and General Manager of the Norton Business Unit at cyber security firm Symantec.
The attackers are people who want money and are located all over the world, “especially in Eastern Europe, Russia and North Korea”.
Citing the findings of the Norton Cybersecurity Insights Report, released last November, Rosch said 48 per cent of India’s online population, or around 113 million Indians, was affected by cyber crime last year.
Despite awareness of the threat, there is a lack of simple protection measures to safeguard information online, with one in four Indians sharing passwords as a common practice. And people continue to use passwords such as Password123.
Older people are smarter Surprisingly, says Rosch, it is not the millennial Indians but people above 40 who are serious about protecting data and information in their personal computers.
The millennials are more open and share passwords and other sensitive information.
“We need to get in to this age group and tell them that it is a serious problem,” Rosch told BusinessLine recently. Older people use complicated passwords, don’t share passwords and don’t click on links when it comes from an unknown source.
The widespread adoption of Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram in India is another avenue of attack by ‘bad guys’ who collect information about individuals from these social media applications, says Rosch.
The Norton Cybersecurity Insights Report says that Indian consumers affected by cyber crime lost, on average, 29.6 hours compared to 21 hours across 17 countries surveyed. Indians lost an average of ₹16,558 compared to the global average of ₹23,878.
False sense of security “Consumers are overconfident of their online security behaviour. Around 350 million are already on the internet and this number is expected to reach 500 million in the next few years. With over a billion people with mobile phones, including a large number on the Android operating system, cyber crime will be massive problem. Consumers have not realised how important security is whether in a PC or mobile. “A decade ago, there were 10-12 new malwares a month. Now, a million variations are coming out every month,” says Rosch.
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