52% Indian Netizens Do Not Take Cyber Security Seriously: Survey

About 52 per cent of Indian netizens have publicly shared their phone numbers/personal addresses, said a technological survey on Thursday that revealed that most Internet-using population of the country tend to neglect basic cyber hygiene practices.

While 26 per cent of the participants said they shared sensitive OTP's (one-time passwords) with others, 22 per cent of respondents admitted to sharing bank account passwords, UPI pin, credit and debit card details with others, according to the survey by second-hand goods marketplace OLX.

The findings were revealed ahead of Safer Internet Day on February 11.

Overall, the survey indicates that even though Indians have come far in digital transformation in our daily lives, the majority of people in the country prefer to transact offline and even if they do transact online, they do it for money transfer, online shopping and paying utility bills.

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Only 48 per cent of the people surveyed would want to report the fraud if they were defrauded and they accept having missed exercising basic precautionary measures like not sharing personal and confidential information publicly or reading safety privacy tips and terms on websites and apps.

About 73 per cent of respondents said they actively skipped the terms and conditions/safety-legal guidelines owing to the fact they were cumbersome to read and too complex to understand, according to the annual report titled "OLX 2020 Internet Behaviour Study". (IANS)