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Cybercrime goes Mobile, Costs India $8bn

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DQI Bureau
New Update

As consumers goes mobile so do Cybercriminals. According to recently released Norton Cyber crime Report 2012,mobile vulnerabilities doubled in 2011 from 2010.

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"It is estimated that over 42 million people in India fell victim to cyber crime in the past 12 months, suffering approximately $8 billion in direct financial losses," said David Hall, Regional Consumer Product Marketing Manager, Asia Pacific, Norton by Symantec in an exclusive interaction with Dataquest.

The findings are part of the Norton Cyber crime Report 2012 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 cyber crime at $110 billion.

According to the Report, 66% of Indian online adults have been victims of cyber crime in their lifetime. In the past 12 months 56% of online adults in India have experienced cyber crime, translating to more than 115,000 victims of cyber crime 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.

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Also close to 31% mobile users in India 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 "voice mail"

Globally, every second, 18 adults become victims of cyber crime, resulting in more than one-and-a-half million cyber crime 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 cyber crime. This figure is on par with the findings from 2011 (45%).

David Hall explained that Norton in its report found out an increase in "new" forms of cyber crime compared to last year, such as those found on social networks or mobile devices - a sign that cyber criminals are starting to focus their efforts on these increasingly popular platforms, the Report said.

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"In India, one in three online adults (32%) has been a victim of either social or mobile cyber crime in the last 12 months, and 51% of social network users have been victims of social cyber crime,"explained Hall, Norton by Symantec.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 cyber criminals 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".

 

 

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