Indian Cybercrime Victims Refuse to Learn From Hacking Experience, Reveals Norton Survey

Nearly one-third of cybercrime victims in India fall back into their old habits despite having concerns about their network security, according to the Norton Cyber Security Insights Report 2016. The study also says that Indian consumers remain complacent about cyber-security and protecting their personal data online despite the growing threat.

Norton Cyber Security Insights Report 2016 is based on a survey of 1,028 Indian Internet users, age 18 years and above.

79 percent of the respondents said they know that the importance of protecting their information online, yet 1 in 5 of them had one or more unprotected device. Regarding the reasons for being lax about cyber-security, 29 percent said they can deal with issues as they arise, while 36 percent felt they did not do anything “risky” on the internet. 23 percent of those surveyed felt that cyber-security measures slowed them down, and a similar number (24 percent) didn’t see the need to protect their gadgets.

Interestingly, 64 percent of the respondents from India said they use secure passwords on every account, but a quarter of them readily admit that they can share it with others as well. Indian consumers share passwords for their laptops (64 percent), smartphones (63 percent), email accounts (49 percent), social media accounts (42 percent), banking accounts (30 percent), and connected home devices (27 percent).

Twenty-seven percent of those surveyed admitted to sharing their passwords, with millennials (34 percent) leading the way, while Gen X (23 percent) and people aged 55+ (17 percent) a distant second and third, respectively. It comes as no surprise that 55 percent of the millennials who shared their passwords with others experienced cybercrime in the last year.

As many as 64 percent of the respondents said that remaining safe on the internet has become difficult over the past 5 years; 60 percent said the same of the real world. In fact, one of the factors working against the consumers is the “overwhelming” amount of information they need to protect in the connected world.

Yet, 65 percent of the consumers do not think there are enough connected device users for cybercrime activities be a worthwhile for hackers. But 68 percent feel hackers are on their way to learn how breaking into connected devices can be profitable to them, just as they did from targeting social media and financial accounts. Interestingly, researchers from Symantec – Norton’s parent company – said they had identified vulnerabilities in 50 different connected home devices.

With one million cyber-attacks per day against consumers in 2015, the need to focus on cyber-security is becoming more and more apparent every day. The situation is just as grave in India too, where 11 percent of the survey participants said they had been victims of ransomware, while another 22 percent said they knew someone who was a victim. As many as 83 percent of those who admitted to falling victim to cyber-attacks said their machines were hacked last year. Nearly a third (27 percent) of the users who fell prey to ransomware paid the hackers to get their files back, while 26 percent paid but did not get their files back.

Indians would be easy prey to another common cybercrime tool: phishing, in which emails from a website resembling one of your contacts (a friend, a bank official, a service provider, etc.) tries to access your personal details, credit card information and other information by taking you to websites infected with malware. As many as 33 percent of the participants could not identify a phishing attack, while a smaller number (9 percent) resorted to guessing to determine if the emails were phishing mails or not.