More than a third of Russians have fallen victim to cyber-crime, a
report by state-run pollster the Russian Public
Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) revealed
Wednesday.
Some 31 percent of respondents said that they had fallen for an online scam, with 58 percent describing themselves as “helpless” when it came to cyber-security.
Russians are most concerned by the threat of online theft, with 65 saying that they feared that money could be stolen from bank cards or online accounts.
Fifty-eight percent of people said that they were afraid of being caught out by phishing scams or other hoaxes, while 55 percent worried that hackers could access their personal information via e-mails or social media.
More than half of respondents – 52 percent - also said that they feared “man-made disasters” caused by hackers gaining access to nuclear power stations or ballistic missiles.
The poll was carried out among 1,600 people between Dec. 10-11, 2016 in 130 settlements in 46 Russian regions. The margin of error does not exceed 3.5 percent.
As of December 2015, 77.5 million Russians aged over 18 years - or 66 percent of the country's population – were online, including 62 million people who surfed the web daily, according to data from the Public Opinion Foundation.
