Richard Patterson/CC

By CHAT News Today

Tech making people more vulnerable

Survey finds majority of Canadians report being a victim of cybercrime

Jul 9, 2020 | 10:35 AM

Survey data collected from Canadians in May reveals 57 per cent of Canadians report being the victim of a cybercrime.

Undertaken by Cybersecure Policy Exchange (CPX), the survey also says that the technologies have adopted since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic have made them more vulnerable to privacy and security risks.

Fifty-five per cent of Canadians have used Facebook Messenger and 46 per cent have used Zoom.

“We live and work in a time of unprecedented technology development and adoption — further accelerated by events like COVID-19,” said Charles Finlay, executive director of Rogers Cybersecure Catalyst. “We need urgent national policies that protect our security and digital privacy, while ensuring equal access for all. That is why we developed CPX — to be a platform for debating and advancing cybersecurity policy that is of critical importance to all Canadians.”

Other findings of the report include:

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• 31% unintentionally installed or downloaded a computer virus or malware;
• 28% experienced a data breach that exposed personal information; and
• 22% had an online account hacked;
• 13% have been a victim of phishing; and
• 8% have unintentionally installed or downloaded ransomware.

CPX hopes the survey findings will launch larger discussions about cybersecurity and digital policy in Canada, and create innovative policy repsonses.

CPX will focus its work on three high-impact technologies:

Social Media Platforms: Online platforms that enable users to connect and share user-generated content. Only 15 per cent of Canadians trust Facebook to keep their data secure, compared to 62 per cent who trust the federal government and 73 per cent who trust health-care providers.

Internet of Things (IoT): Physical networked devices connected to the Internet, from consumer electronics, to larger industrial and infrastructure applications. Sixty-eight per cent of Canadians have at least one smart device in their home.

Biometrics and Facial Recognition: Technologies that measure and analyze a person’s physical or behavioural attributes to recognize or confirm identities, such as facial recognition. Forty-one per cent of Canadians are uncomfortable with being captured by video doorbells like Amazon’s Ring, and 15 per cent support a ban on these products.

The full findings are available at cybersecuritypolicy.ca/agenda An anonymous survey was conducted online by Pollara Strategic Insights on behalf of the Cybersecure Policy Exchange with 2,000 Canadian residents 18 years of age or older, from May 14 to 22, 2020. As a guideline, a probability sample of this size would yield results accurate to +/- 2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20. The data were weighted by region, gender and age, based on the most recent Canadian census figures to ensure that the sample matched Canada’s population.