Indians are the world toppers in an area they would prefer to be at the last. Indians are more vulnerable to technology support-related scams compared to the global average. India's tech support scam rate at 69% in the last 12 months is among the highest in 16 countries surveyed for the Microsoft's 2021 Global Tech Support Scam Research report.
Most of these scams in India emerged from unsolicited calls.
There was an overall five-point drop in such scams globally with a rate of 59% over the same period.
Microsoft attributed the high number of scam victims in India to the trusting nature of people to unsolicited contact and more inclined to believe that a legitimate company would initiate contact.
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Indians were repeat victims
Worryingly for Indians, they did not seem wiser for the bad experience. About 48% of those surveyed in India were tricked into continuing with the scam – an 8-point increase from 2018, and three times higher than the global average at 16%. One in three of those surveyed continued engaging and eventually lost money, an increase of 17 points compared with 2018 (14%)
Those in India who lost money to such scams in 2021 lost Rs 15,334 on average - good money in Indian scheme of things. The better news is that around 88% of those who lost any money were able to recover some back, with the average being Rs 10,797.
Millennials, or those aged 24-37, were the most susceptible to such scams in India, the report said
Incidences of unsolicited call scams increased from 23% to 31% in India between 2018 to 2021, and this continues to be the scam type that consumers in India respond to most often.
The report noted that respondents in India were most likely to respond to unsolicited telephone calls (45%) as compared to a pop-up window or ad on their PC screen (33%), unsolicited emails (36%) and redirection to another website (30%).
In contrast, global scam encounter rates for unsolicited calls fell from 27% in 2018 to 25% in 2021.
"Tech support scams are perpetrated globally and target people of all ages. Findings reveal that compared to the rest of the world, consumers in India are more likely to be targeted, less inclined to ignore scam interactions, and as a result, lose more money," Mary Jo Schrade, Assistant General Counsel (Regional Lead) at Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit Asia, said.
Among the methods of payment through which the gullible were conned include: direct bank transfers (43%), gift cards (38%), PayPal (32%), credit cards (32%), and Bitcoin (25%).Microsoft had commissioned YouGov for this global survey in 16 countries, including India, Australia, Japan and Singapore and it included 16,254 adult internet users (about 1,000 per country). This is a follow-up to similar surveys that Microsoft conducted in 2018 and 2016.
