Cyber Crimes – @shutterstock | Billion Photos
+++ 23.4 million German cybercrime victims +++ Every second internet user is a victim of cybercrime +++ Every second person is afraid of cybercrime +++ Americans fear attacks from the Internet +++
23.4 million German cybercrime victims
Norton Cyber Security Insights Report counted 978 million cybercrime victims in 20 countries last year, including 23.4 million from Germany. Those affected suffered a total loss of $172 billion. That's an average of $142 per case. The most common forms of cybercrime are viruses, stolen passwords and credit card fraud. According to the study, victims of cybercrime are characterized by increased negligence. For example, compared to those not affected, they were almost twice as likely to use the same password for all their online accounts.
Every second internet user is a victim of cybercrime
Suddenly your own profile on the social network appears twice - only the new one sends spam. The computer blocks and tells you that it can only be unlocked again upon payment. The last time you shopped online, you paid in advance and then never saw the goods. Cybercrime has many faces; last year, every second internet user became a victim in some way.
This is shown by a current survey by the digital association Bitkom . The most common scenario is that your own computer is infected with malware, as the graphic from Statista shows. 19 percent say that their access data for social networks or online shops was stolen. Eight percent were affected by massive insults, and five percent were sexually harassed online.
Nevertheless, two-thirds of those affected do nothing. The reasons given by 45 percent of those surveyed are that they believe the perpetrator will not be found anyway, 34 percent say the effort is simply too high and 13 percent believe that the police and public prosecutors do not take cybercrime seriously.
Every second person is afraid of cybercrime
Every second internet user in Germany is afraid of cybercrime: This is the conclusion reached by the research institute Ipsos in a recent survey . But Germans also see positive aspects of digitalization.
In the survey, Ipsos differentiated between Internet experts and Internet beginners. 56 percent of beginners said that digitalization had increased their fear of cybercrime. Among the experts it was 48 percent. However, almost half of the experts (45 percent) also see digital change as an inspiration to take on new challenges. Among beginners, 21 percent see it this way, as the Statista graphic shows.
The fear of losing a job due to digitalization, on the other hand, is not widespread: only 11 percent of Internet experts and 15 percent of normal users fear such an impact.
Americans fear attacks from the Internet
On March 15, 2017, attackers gained access to thousands of Twitter accounts, including many of celebrities. The hijacked user accounts then spread identical inflammatory messages in Turkish. This relatively harmless incident shows once again that cyber attacks from abroad pose a real danger. Pew Research Center from January also shows that this causes worry lines on people's foreheads Accordingly, 71 percent of US citizens surveyed consider such attacks from the Internet to be a major threat. The study participants only found the Islamic State to be more threatening. But attacks from the Internet are also a topic that concerns people in this country, as another survey by the same institute from last year shows. 66 percent of Germans surveyed said that they consider cyber attacks from other countries to be a major threat.
Information and communications crime – @shutterstock | Telnov Oleksii
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