69% people in India encountered tech-support scams in past 12 months

Nearly 70% people in India encountered tech support related scams in the last 12 months, which was the highest among 16 countries surveyed globally, technology company Microsoft said in a report on Thursday. The data is very close to the findings of a similar survey done by the company back in 2018. However, the company also said that the number of customers who were exposed to such scams globally has come down in comparison with 2018 data.

Findings from the survey were published in the Global Tech Support Scam Research 2021 report released by Microsoft on Thursday. YouGov, a market research firm, was commissioned by Microsoft to conduct the survey. The web-based survey was conducted between May 6 and May 17, across 16 countries in which 16,254 adult internet users were involved. The sample size from each country included internet users based on age, gender and region.

In India, tech support scams by unsolicited telephone calls witnessed the maximum increase since 2018. While it was 23% in the last survey, it grew to 31%, an increase of eight percentage points. Also, pop-up advertisements or windows, unsolicited emails, redirects to websites remained the other forms of the scam. Hindustan Times