A large number of Indians have experienced some form of cybercrime including hacks, identity theft and other issues in the past 12 months alone, reveals a Norton Report.
The findings from the 2021 Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report highlightd that over 27 million Indian adults have experienced identity theft in the past year. Over 59% of Indian adults have experienced cybercrimes in the past 12 months and that cybercrime victims have collectively spent around 1.3 billion hours trying to resolve these issues, it said.
The report states that 70% Indians believe that remote work has made it much easier for hackers to take advantage of them. Remote work has forced a lot of people to take work to their personal computers and laptops, which are often not as securely protected as office machines.
Ritesh Chopra, Director of Sales and Field Marketing at NortonLifeLock, said in a year of lockdowns and restrictions, cybercriminals have not been deterred. “More Indian adults fell victim to identity theft in the past 12 months and most are concerned about data privacy,” he said. “The survey also revealed that of the 36% of Indian adults who detected unauthorized access to an account of device in the past 12 months, about half felt angry or stressed because of the issue.”
Furthermore, two in five people felt scared or vulnerable, while three in 10 people felt powerless against the cybercrimes they became a victim of. “Over two in five Indian consumers, that is 45%, have experienced identity theft, with 14% impacted in the past year alone, which is 10% up from 2019,” the report says. “About 66% of Indian adults also stated that they are more worried than ever before about being a victim of cybercrime.”
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The report said 63% of Indian adults revealed that they feel very vulnerable to cybercrime than they did before the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the cyber crimes, 52% of Indian adults have reported not knowing how to protect themselves from cybercrime, and 68% say it’s difficult for them to know for sure if the information they see online is from a credible source.
