Millennials and Generation Z continue to fall victims to online tech scams: Microsoft survey

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Online technological scams have been increasingly plaguing the world especially millennials and Generation Z (Gen Z), according to a survey conducted by Microsoft. There are frequent reports of online fraudsters who pretend to be employees of reputed companies notify people with cold calls and fake pop-ups. These scammers extract money from the victim by fraudulently trying to convince users that there is a problem with their computer, which they will fix.

Findings

A recent 2021 survey conducted by Microsoft across 16 countries, showed that millennials and Gen Z have the highest exposure to tech support scams. One out of ten millennials and Gen Z have fallen for the scam and lost money. The most common issue experienced by users during the interaction with scammers were computer problems which accounted for 30%, followed by compromised passwords accounting for 23%, and fraudulent use of debit and credit cards.

The survey also highlighted that only three out of the five customers encountered a tech support scam in the last 12 months. One out of the six consumers were tricked into continuing the scam often leading to victims losing hundreds of dollars to frauds.

Though only fewer consumers have been exposed to tech support scams as compared to the 2018 survey. It also showed that people are generally more skeptical about tech support calls or pop-up messages. However, people who continued with the interaction were more likely to have lost money than those in the previous survey.

Some of the most commonly used methods by scammers include asking the user to download software or asking the user to visit a particular website or sometimes even using emails, search engine optimization, or social engineering tactics to lure victims.

On the bright side, one can avoid such scams by not responding to numbers with pop up and error messages, downloading software from the company or partner site, and activating anti-virus software in the system.