If most of us have gone mobile, so have the cyber criminals. And like many of us, most of their time is being spent on the social networking sites. The cyber criminals are making a living out of it.
According to Norton Cybercrime Report 2012, 66% of Indian online adults have been a victim of cyber fraud in their lifetime. In the past 12 months, 56% of online adults in India have experienced cyber fraud.
As per the report, at least 1,15,000 people fall prey to cyber fraud every day, while 80 per minute and more than one per second leading to a rise in the average direct financial cost per victim to around Rs10,500.
According to the survey, the cybercriminals have now shifted their focus to the increasingly popular social platforms. One in three adults online Indians (32%) have been either social or mobile cybercrime victims.
While most internet users delete suspicious emails and are careful with their personal details online. However, 25% don’t use complex passwords or change their passwords frequently and 38% do not check for the padlock symbol in the browser before entering sensitive personal information.
Online adults are also unaware of the evolution of most common forms of cybercrime. In fact, 68% of adults do not know that malware can operate in a discreet fashion, making it hard to know if a computer has been compromised, and one third (35%) are not certain that their computer is currently clean and free of viruses.
“Malware and viruses used to wreak obvious havoc on your computer,” said Ibrahim. “You’d get a blue screen, or your computer would
crash, alerting you to an infection. But cybercriminals have evolved new methods to avoid detection,” added Ibrahim.
