China – A New Favorite of Cybercriminals

Besides being the favorite country of businesses, brands, and people looking for cheap knock-offs, China is now fast-becoming the favorite hunting ground of cybercriminals.

Keeping the recent findings in view, it comes as no surprise that cybercriminals have managed to inflict damage worth $37 billion on the Chinese people.

How Cybercriminals Operate in China

Interestingly, cybercriminals in China aren’t using any sophisticated or state-of-the-art technologies to achieve their evil motives. On the contrary, they are employing old-school scam methods to tempt unsuspecting users into willingly giving away their personal information.

One such incident of scamming people into sharing their personal information involved a mass mobile message or a SMS, which went semi-viral. The sender of the message – one of the cybercriminals in China – offered to give away Golden Retriever puppies at no cost to people who replied with their personal information.

A different kind of scam used the online platform to scam women into wiring money to person who was posing as their son’s teacher.

 

Don’t Blame the Chinese

We know, what you are thinking.

How can the Chinese be so naïve to share their personal information with the sender of a SMS, and how gullible were those Chinese mothers who wired money to someone who was pretending to be the teacher of their sons?

Well, while it is shocking for us, the Chinese people are just getting used to cybercrime as it’s only been like a decade since the internet became available for the Chinese masses.

 

A Dragon is Rising

Furthermore, these simple yet tricky scams are just the tip of the iceberg since the increasing adaptability of Smartphones presents a new threat for users, and a new avenue for cybercriminals in China. It is astonishing to note that 75 percent of Smartphone users in China experienced mobile cybercrime over the past 12 months. Comparatively, the global average of users experiencing some form of mobile cybercrime stands at just 38 percent.

 

The Forbidden Store

The Chinese government has blocked Google Play Store in China, leaving Smartphone users to install apps from third-party websites.  A study conducted in 2013 by the Data Center of China’s Internet revealed that 35 percent of the 1,400 most popular apps used in China were unnecessarily tracking user data without any logical or technical reasons.

 

For Better or for Worse?

Intel Security’s global chief technology officer Michael Sentonas said,

“The ability to access Google Play is not there, so Chinese go to alternate app stores that don’t have the security capabilities of Google’s official app store.”

Thankfully, it seems that the Chinese government too has realized the gravity of this situation. President Xi Jinping is chairing a new group that will focus on Internet threats and how to deal with them.

 

Get PureVPN’s Security

Chinese internet users can take proactive steps to ensure their security by using PureVPN. Not only does PureVPN protect them from malicious software, and hacking attempts, it also saves them from surveillance and monitoring by keeping them anonymous with more than 77,000 IPs, and more than 450 servers in 87+ countries.

Additionally, people in China can also access their favorite social media websites blocked in China and install apps directly from Google App Store and minimize security risks associated with their Smartphones.