It is estimated that over 42 million people in India fell victim to cybercrime in the past 12 months, suffering approximately $8 billion in direct financial losses.
The findings are part of the Norton Cybercrime Report 2012 released today that is based on experiences of over 13000 adults across 24 countries globally, including 1000 from India. This calculates the direct costs associated with global consumer cybercrime at $110 billion.
According to the Report, 66% of Indian online adults have been victims of cybercrime in their lifetime. In the past 12 months 56% of online adults in India have experienced cybercrime, translating to more than 115,000 victims of cybercrime every day, 80 victims per minute and more than 1 per second. The average direct financial cost per victim is placed at $ 192, up 18% over $ 163 in 2011.
Globally, every second, 18 adults become victims of cybercrime, resulting in more than one-and-a-half million cybercrime victims each day. With losses totalling an average of $ 197 per victim across the world in direct financial costs, in the past 12 months, an estimated 556 million or 46% adults across the world experienced cybercrime. This figure is on par with the findings from 2011 (45%).
Changing Face
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 devices - a sign that cybercriminals are starting to focus their efforts on these increasingly popular platforms, the Report said.
In India, one in three online adults (32%) has been a victim of either social or mobile cybercrime in the last 12 months, and 51% of social network users have been victims of social cybercrime. Specifically, 22% of social network users reported someone had hacked into their profile and pretended to be them, 15% of social network users said they had fallen victim to a scam or fake link on social network platforms.
While 83% believe that cybercriminals are setting their sights on social networks, only around half (57%) 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%) 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 Report 7 which reported nearly twice the mobile vulnerabilities in 2011 from the year before.”