Surprise! Young, tech-savvy men most likely to fall for tech-support scams, says Microsoft
Surprise! Young, tech-savvy men nigh likely to fall for tech-support scams, says Microsoft
It's overconfident immature men, not frightened old ladies, who are most likely to autumn for tech-support scams, a survey conducted by Microsoft and YouGov reveals.
The online survey interviewed more than 16,000 people in xvi countries worldwide in May 2021 and plant that 16% of millennial men, defined as those respondents aged 24-37, said they had lost money to scammers in the yr and some months since Jan 2020. Fully 27% said they were happy to appoint with the scammers.
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On the other end, only ane% of Boomer women (anile 54 and older) said they had lost money, and at merely 8% said they engaged the scammers at all.
The scams can come via unsolicited telephone calls, unsolicited emails or other messages or pop-upwards windows in spider web browsers. About of them involve a phony "tech support agent" who tells yous that there'southward something wrong with your computer or its software and that you accept to purchase or renew services immediately.
Regardless of age or gender, the survey report said people who called themselves figurer "experts" were much more than probable to lose money to tech-support scammers than were people who considered themselves to be "advanced" or "intermediate" computer users.
"Information technology is Gen Z, Millennials and males who were hardest hit and most likely to have lost money, likely due to younger generations being more 'online' and engaging in more risky activities," said the report, adding that "those who lost money... displayed (over) confidence in their figurer literacy."
Such "risky activities" are commonplace amid internet users under thirty: getting software from torrent sites; downloading pirated movies, music or TV shows; and providing an email address in lodge to receive gratuitous content.
The U.S. is not the biggest target
Some other interesting tidbit: Westerners may blame India for tech-support scams, as many fake tech-support agents take stiff subcontinental accents, but the Microsoft/YouGov survey finds that Indians are by far the well-nigh frequent victims of such scams.
Fully 31% of Indians who responded to the survey reported losing money to tech-support scammers. The next-highest rate of victims was in the U.Southward., where ten% reported losing money, followed closely past Australia and Mexico.
Indians were as well the near trusting overall: Forty-8 percent reported engaging with scammers, followed by Brazil at 29% and Mexico at 21%.
Only 18% of Americans engaged with the scammers; 49% either hung up the phone or ignored the pop-upward window or email message trying to lure them into a scam.
The smartest calculator users may be those in the U.Yard., where about as many people reported encountering tech-support scams as in the U.S. (lx% compared to 67%), merely only 8% of U.Chiliad. residents said they engaged with the scammers and only 1% lost coin.
Nihon seems to have the lowest rate tech-support scams: Just 28% of respondent said they'd encountered i in the past 16 months. At the other extreme, 69% of Brazilians said they'd encountered a tech-support scam.
The survey interviewed 16,254 internet users 18 and over from May half-dozen to May 17, 2021, in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Republic of finland, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, the U.K. and the U.S. The total report tin can be read here.
Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/microsoft-tech-support-scam-survey
Posted by: goodsonsentes.blogspot.com
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