After a series of high-profile data breaches in the past few months, users around the world have become more worried about their online safety. According to the Forter study, the level of potential danger of becoming a victim of cyber fraudsters differs depending on the region and country. So in which countries is it most dangerous to shop online?
In the course of research, Forter analyzed over a million e-commerce transactions worldwide in 2021. According to the results of the study, it turned out that Africa is a kind of epicenter of cybercrime, with an average rate of occurrence of fraud cases ten times higher than the world average. South America is not too far behind it - cases of theft of personal data of users on the Internet appear here three times more often than the world average. Next on the list of dangerous regions is Asia, which is especially frightening given the number of users in the region who shop online. The incidence of cyber fraud in Europe is slightly below the global average. But does this make European countries safe for online shopping?
The regions listed above are home to the countries with the highest fraud rates on the planet. Despite Asia's “second place”, it is home to the most dangerous country in the world for online shopping - Indonesia. It is followed by Venezuela (South America), South Africa (Africa), Brazil (South America). In fifth place in terms of the number of cyberattacks is the European country Romania.
If you are looking for a safe place on the planet to shop online, the countries of Scandinavia are for you. They took three positions out of five in the top ranking of safe countries. Out of other regions, only New Zealand can boast the same secure online trading.
Denmark has the lowest cybercrime rate, followed by Norway, Finland, the aforementioned New Zealand and finally Switzerland. Notably, Switzerland also has the largest number of online shoppers in the world.
The study also looked at e-commerce fraud in terms of the devices used. It turns out that Android devices are twice as likely to be targeted by cybercriminals as iOS devices. This is due to the open source code of the Android operating system, which allows fraudsters to better study it and find vulnerabilities.
