Survey by Chandigarh Cyber Crime Investigation Cell: 52.7% unaware of cybercrimes, 80% got fraud messages, calls

About 36 per cent of local residents have been victims of cybercrimes on Google, Facebook, Instagram, OLX and Twitter. About 80 per cent of participants received fraud messages/calls but merely 20.3 per cent of them preferred to report to the police. Exactly 57.9 per cent of them preferred to ignore the calls/messages. The survey was conducted under the Cyber Swachhta Mission and received inputs from 1,395 participants. Union Home Minister Amit Shah had released a detailed booklet on the survey in Chandigarh on March 27.

The participants answered multiple-choice questions related to cybercrimes and cyber security. Of all the participants, 70.9 per cent were men while 27.9 per cent were women. Most of the people who took part were between the age of 20 and 40 years while the smallest sample group was between the ages of 10 and 20 years.

About 18 per cent of the people who participated in the survey were found to use the Internet for more than six hours daily while 31.1 per cent would use it for more than four hours. Exactly 817 people of the total 1,393 responded that they use the Internet for work, 475 claimed to use it for educational purposes, while 800 (including from both of the above-mentioned groups) said that they use the Internet for entertainment purposes as well.

“We include every section of society in the survey. More than 300 cyber interns visited people at their houses, offices, colleges, universities and also at markets. We have decided to prepare a roadmap keeping in view the findings of the survey. There is a need for more cyber awareness. We have decided to intensify our awareness campaign. People will be motivated to report the cyber crimes to the local police”, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) (cyber) Rashmi Yadav Sharma, said.

The cyber interns are from the computer science department of Panjab University (PU) – UIET, Punjab Engineering College (PEC) and a few other institutes. Interestingly, 64 per cent of people are careful to not share their OTP as a precautionary measure when online, 41.9 per cent of people regularly change their passwords while 38.4 per cent do not save their passwords. However, a significant number of them do not use precautionary measures to keep themselves safe online.

Cyber cell Inspector Hari Om, who supervised the survey, said, “We observed from the survey that many people using smart cell phones were not aware about all the functions of their cell phones.”