Amid an increase in cyber frauds, users in India receive about 12 fake messages or scams every day via email, text or social media, according to a scam message study by McAfee.
The trend suggests that the common forms of scam that the people fall for are fake job notifications or offers and bank alert messages. While 64% of the surveyed people in India fall for job scams, 52% become victims of bank alert scams.
Reasons suggested by people on falling for these scams is the difficulty in identifying scam messages. Around 60% of Indian respondents think it has become harder to identify scam messages, attributing this trend to hackers using AI to make their scams more believable, the study said. Many respondents also claimed that the scam messages do not have any typos or errors, and are very believable.
“It’s truly a sign of the times that most Indian consumers would rather subject themselves to the pain and distress of a root canal than be subjected to scam texts and messages throughout the year,” said Roma Majumder, senior vice president – product at McAfee.
“And it’s not just the speed and volume, but the sophistication. Thanks to AI, it can be incredibly difficult to know if that delivery text message or bank alert notification is real or not. So much so that 73% of Indians believe they have a better shot at solving the Rubik’s cube than identifying a scam message,” Majumder added.
The study revealed that an average Indian spends 105 minutes each week reviewing, verifying or deciding whether a message sent through text, email, social media is real or fake. This amounts to more than two full work weeks each year, spent on scam-spotting.
As the number of AI-powered scams continues to rise, people have been losing their trust in digital communications. This trend is largely due to a lack of depth of digital defense knowledge.
The users can protect themselves from scam messages by not clicking on links received by them over email or SMS from unknown and weak sources. Cybercriminals use phishing emails or fake sites to lure people into clicking links that could lead to malware. Users are advised to go directly to the source and interact with reputable companies.
