Highly educated professionals are vulnerable to financial cybercrime, says an IIT-Madras study
The study found that high digital literacy does not necessarily protect individuals from cyber fraud. | Photo credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto
A study led by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-Madras) found that victims of financial cybercrime in India are often highly educated professionals, challenging the perception that victims are primarily careless, financially ignorant or greedy. The study found that high digital literacy does not necessarily protect individuals from cyber fraud. Victims included IT professionals, bankers, doctors, management and finance professionals, public sector officials, and individuals with cybersecurity certifications.
The researchers found that victims were often targeted during periods of stress or disruption in life, including illness in the family, retirement, job hunting or workplace pressures. Fraudsters have used fear, financial expectations and reputational concerns to create ‘artificial brain freeze’, with victims describing a state of ‘mind freeze’ that impaired their ability to think clearly. Financial losses ranged from a few thousand rupees to more than ₹1 trillion, while victims also reported shame, insomnia, depression and broken family trust. The study also found that institutional responses varied, with some banks and cybercrime cells responding quickly, while others lacked the required technical capabilities and coordination.
The study was led by former IPS officer P. Kandaswamy and Nandan Sudarsanam of IIT Madras in collaboration with Akanksha Jaiswal, Associate Professor, The University of Western Australia, Chennai Campus and Ameeta Fernando of Loyola Institute of Business Administration, Chennai. The research received support from the Wadhwani School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at IIT Madras.
The study sample included financial cybercrime victims residing in various Indian cities including Chennai, Bengaluru. Hyderabad, New Delhi and Mumbai. The team contacted the cyber crime cells in these cities and shared the purpose of the study with police officers, who in turn shared the victims’ contact details and provided the victims with an introduction to the research study. The latest details included 11 women and 22 men, mostly married and dependent. Among them were 12 seniors, including one who was blind.
Mr. Kandaswamy IPS (Retd), Adjunct Faculty, Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Department of Management Studies, IIT Madras said, “The response to cybercrime must go beyond victim blaming. Banks and law enforcement agencies need stronger systems for early detection, rapid intervention and coordinated response along with better victim support.”
Nandan Sudarsanam, Wadhwani School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, IIT Madras, said: “Our findings show that financial cybercrime is not just a problem of poor digital literacy. Even highly educated and digitally savvy individuals can become vulnerable when fraudsters exploit fear, stress and urgency. Understanding these factors is critical to designing more effective prevention strategies.”
India’s rapid digital transition, near-universal mobile access, UPI and the broader push for digital India have brought hundreds of millions of first-generation users into digital finance within a decade, opening up an unusually wide attack surface for investment and share trading scams, task and job scams, digital payment scams, malware attacks and India’s signature ‘digital arrest’ scam.
While official statistics from India’s Cyber Crime Coordination Center (I4C) record transactional breaches, they are silent on the human trauma behind the numbers, leading the research team to ask a human rather than a technical question.
Published – 30 Sep 2026 01:19 IST