Most Singaporeans believe they not targets of cybercrime: Survey
Cyber criminals do more than just spam calls, e-mails and texts. They can steal and sell your stolen information on the black market too.
One person who fell victim to cybercrime is Miss Stephanie Chailert. In 2016, she was charged about €3,000 (S$4,571) for a booking on a hotel listing site for a hotel in Amsterdam that she did not make, after logging on to a spoof Wi-Fi network when on a business trip to Bangkok.
The account manager, 30, told The New Paper: "I like to attempt logging on to free Wi-Fi networks to save on my mobile data and will try every option that does not require a password."
Miss Chailert was alerted to the unauthorised transaction through an SMS notification from her bank two days after logging on to the spoof network. She immediately called her bank to notify it of the unauthorised charge on her card.
"I was annoyed that I had to go through so much hassle to verify my identity and prove I was not aware of the transaction," she said. "But thankfully, I was able to recover my money in about two weeks' time thanks to the bank."
Since then, Miss Chailert has taken more care when logging on to public Wi-Fi networks and has contemplated getting a radio frequency identification blocking wallet to use when she travels.
The Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) conducted the Cybersecurity Public Awareness Survey last year and found that most Singaporeans believed they were not targets of cybercrimes. While respondents showed high levels of concern, 70 per cent felt these crimes would not happen to them.
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The survey also showed that close to half of the respondents had experienced at least one cyber incident in the past year.
More than one in three of them singled out advertisement pop-ups after browsing websites online as the most common cyber incident.
According to a CSA spokesman, some of the more common cyberscams are e-commerce and phishing scams; young adults tend to be more susceptible to e-commerce scams while older folks might be more prone to falling for phishing scams.
Chief executive of CSA David Koh said: "Cyberthreats are part and parcel of the digital age, and cyber attacks will only increase. No one is immune."
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