“Majority” of web users suffer cybercrime? Yeah, right.
Two-thirds of Internet users have been victims of online crime. Or at least that’s the extremely stretched claim of one security company.
According to Norton Security, 65 percent of global users and 73 percent of United States users have suffered cybercrime. That’s not the worst location though: the equivalent figures are 76 percent in Brazil and India, while China is at 83 percent.
That sounds scary until you realize exactly what Norton means by this. Its definition of crime includes computer viruses and malware, which have affected 51 percent of those surveyed. While these are indeed criminal offenses in most jurisdictions, it’s certainly not what you think of when you hear “CYBERCRIME!”
Throw out viruses and the most prevalent crime is “online scams”, affecting 10 percent of people, followed by phishing, credit card fraud and sexual predation. The list also includes “social network profile hacking”, which is a bit vague seeing as it could be anything from a criminal attempting to steal confidential data to a pre-teen spotting a computer left logged in and changing a status update to “…is a smelly bumbum.”
There’s also no definition of what it means to “experience” crime. If you receive a bogus e-mail asking for your card details, have you “experienced” phishing, or does it only count if you’ve fallen for it. And if it’s the latter situation, how do we know the true figures aren’t higher: surely most phishing victims won’t be aware that’s what happened?
The problem with this ultra-loose definition of cybercrime is that it makes the other statistics in the study meaningless at best and misleading at worst. For example, the publicity for the report touts that “Even scarier, fewer than half (44 percent) reported the crime to the police.” If this figure covers viruses, it’s hardly surprising: walk into your local police station and report getting a virus, you can expect to be laughed out of the building.
Online crime is a serious problem. But when a company that makes its money from selling security products puts out a report with section headings like “Paralyzed By Powerlessness” and “Frozen By Fear”, while asking the public whether it’s “faceless criminals” or “organized crime units” that should be blamed, it’s very hard to take it seriously.
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