The Ombudsman’s Office and the Faculty of Economic Sciences, presented this Monday the results of a survey aimed at obtaining detailed information and details on the scope of cybercrimes in Santa Fe society carried out by the UNL Social Observatory.
The dean, Liliana Dillon, highlighted the auspiciousness of the collaboration agreement signed between the Office of the Ombudsman and the Faculty “as the starting point for a lot of activities that we want to do together” and that the survey “challenges us to continue building together and to propose policies public on this issue that involves us all”.
The Defender, Jorge Henn, maintained that the survey “revealed the worst of the combinations: it is a visible issue (due to the projection of its growth), there is fear in society and people do not know what to do.”
The activity took place at the aforementioned academic headquarters where, after the press conference by the dean and the Ombudsman, there was a working meeting in which the director of the UNL Social Observatory, Roberto Meyer, presented a power point with the statistical tables in which the information collected from the people of Santa Fe was processed.
An example presented by Meyer graphed the quantitative magnitude developed by the advance of cybercrimes in the very short term of just a few years: “Based on the proportions of the sample, we deduce a critical figure of about 150,000 victims of cybercrimes.”
If one considers that this figure is equivalent to “one and a half times the third urban center of the province (Rafaela) we are talking about the data collected – only in the city of Santa Fe – it reveals a number of citizens who declared themselves victims of some cybercrime greater than the majority of the totality of the inhabitants who own the 362 localities of the province territory, subtracting those that exceed 150 thousand inhabitants, which are the capital and Rosario”.
Faced with “such a phenomenon”, Henn emphasized that “you have to worry and take care of yourself and all social actors should do so because the data is that 2 out of 3 people in the city of Santa Fe are afraid of the risk of falling victim to a cybercrime ”.
Dillón specified that the sample “sought to gather information about cybercrimes, what is the level of knowledge of the people, how many could have been victims, the ways they can find out about this activity and protect themselves; to see if we know the themes of these crimes and if we have the tools to report them. We are very satisfied with the willingness of the public to answer the questions in the survey”.
The survey was carried out in the provincial capital, contacting 419 people in their homes within the urban commons, to which the questionnaire was applied during the second and third weeks of March 2023.
Almost half of those surveyed, 46.8%, admit to having been a victim or knowing someone who was a victim of a cybercrime and close to 70% admit to not being informed about prevention measures.
The data reveals that when “you are the victim of a computer crime there is little level of trust in your interlocutors, such as the Police or the Public Prosecutor’s Office.”
Additionally, 88% are unaware of a channel to report cybercrime.
Some preliminary information reveals that almost 82 percent of people access the Internet daily and almost all do so from home. One in four does so through public Wi-Fi and 64.1% anywhere with their mobile data. In the workplace, 38.8% connect.
Those who access the Internet do so 98.7% through their smartphones, 58.3% use their computers/notebooks and 46.6% through TV devices.
Of those surveyed, 57.8% use the Internet to access home banking; 48.2% for the purchase of public goods or services; 85.4% for use of social networks; 82.8% for email and 75% for streaming and entertainment.
The payment and management of taxes and public services through the Internet is carried out by 53.9% of people and 95.9% use the Internet for instant messaging and 60.4% for payment platforms.
Two out of three users expressed concern about security when making purchases or banking operations over the Internet. And what worries them the most is that their personal data is misused (42.2%); the security of payment or transfers (32.2%) and almost 35% fear not receiving the good or service they purchased.
One in 3 respondents are concerned that there is a real person to ask questions.
The modality that worries a lot is, first of all, that of being a victim of identity theft (77.3%), fraud through credit/debit cards (72.7%) and that their devices are infected by viruses (67.4%).
