As Cybercrime Soars in Central Asia, Digital Literacy Lags Behind |
Crossroads Asia | Security | Central Asia
As Cybercrime Soars in Central Asia, Digital Literacy Lags Behind
There’s no easy solution, but the most obvious first step is to empower individuals to think critically about what they read online.
More than half of the crimes registered in the city of Tashkent in 2025 were cybercrimes, according to the Tashkent City Prosecutor’s Office. With the expansion of digital services and financial transactions conducted online, criminals are following the money.
The Uzbek government knows this is a problem, but its missing the simplest solution: digital literacy.
Last year, Uzbekistan’s Interior Ministry’s Cybercrime Center told Gazeta.uz that theft and fraud involving bank cards are the most common crimes, including phishing and a variety of clever scams that convince individuals to surrender their banking details to criminals.
Uzbekistan’s population is young – with some 60 percent of the population under the age of 30 – and youth are presumed to be technologically adept. But given the skyrocketing rates of cybercrimes, it’s clear that digital literacy is lagging behind the threat.
Digital literacy skills are crucial in combatting cybercrimes. In the context of Indonesia, a group of scholars concluded that “low digital literacy contributes to the increasing vulnerability of individuals and organizations to cyber attacks.” These attacks include web defacement, stealer malware and ransomware, AI-based cyber threats, phishing, and more.
“Digital security is not only the responsibility of the government,” the scholars wrote, “but the public must also take part in protecting their data by being well-literate.”
Digital literacy is the ability to responsibly find, evaluate, utilize, share, and create content online; it shares obvious attributes with other forms of literacy, such as media literacy, especially when it comes to evaluating online information like a post on social media advertising a well-paying job abroad.
One survey-based study of youth and digital technology in Central Asia, which examined how youth use digital technology, made a clear link between media and digital literacy.
“Media and digital literacy — the capacity to locate, verify, and thoughtfully engage with online content — has become essential in an era marked by misinformation, algorithm-driven echo chambers, and information overload,” Farrukh Irnazarov wrote in a paper published last August by the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Silk Road Studies Program. Irnazarov identified a gap between stated values and actual behaviors, noting “youth overwhelmingly express a commitment to accuracy and factchecking, yet their actual behaviors often fall short of these ideals.”
And this has implications for cybersecurity: “Cybersecurity awareness remains low: personal data, including bank details, is often shared freely both online and offline.”
In an era defined by the instant gratification of endless scrolling on platforms like TikTok, and suffused with get-rich-quick schemes and clever tactics to get around regulations and get ahead, it is of little surprise that checking the facts – a brake on taking action – is one of the first habits to go.
And Uzbekistan’s crime statistics lay out the consequences.
Earlier this month Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev was briefed on proposals to fight cybercrime. In the readout, the Uzbek government stated that since 2020, there has been a 48-fold increase in reports of cybercrimes. In 2025, the readout noted, “82 percent of fraud cases and 76 percent of thefts were committed in cyberspace.” The material damage to individuals and companies exceeded 2 trillion Uzbek soms ($163.8 million).
The first proposal? Increasing citizens’ personal responsibility. “It has been proposed to establish administrative and criminal liability for allowing electronic payment instruments, crypto-wallets, SIM cards, and electronic accounts registered in their names to be used in the commission of cybercrimes.”
In short: Punish the person who fell for the scam.
Other proposals included introducing fines for companies that don’t comply with information and cybersecurity requirements, and legal liabilities for banks providing remote financial services for cybercrimes that result from non-compliance with established digital regulations.
None of the proposals mentioned touches on digital literacy.
Uzbekistan’s flagship digital strategy – Digital Uzbekistan 2030 – aims to develop the digital economy, and introduce modern information and communications technologies in all sectors. The relevant presidential decree mentions digital literacy once, in the context of establishing higher education institutions to improve digital literacy in the regions and train government employees. This barely scratches the surface as the opportunities for cybercrime explode.
Cybercrime and the consequences of low digital literacy are not problems unique to Uzbekistan. This week, 24.kg in neighboring Kyrgyzstan reported that online scammers advertising jobs with large salaries in the United Kingdom and Germany managed to steal $110,000 from 68 people in 2025. Last month, Kazakh authorities detained 20 suspects in Turkestan related to an internet and telephone fraud scheme they claim caused 125 million tenge ($258,900) in damages to 21 victims.
And these are not problems unique to Central Asia: Southeast Asia has earned the unfortunate moniker of the “scam capital of the world” on the back of massive online scams operated out of facilities in countries like Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos. These scam centers are often staffed by people who themselves had fallen victim to online scams (including some from Central Asia), and were trafficked to the region to work in prison-like conditions. The scale of the damage is immense. In 2024, Americans lost over $10 billion due to Southeast Asia-based scams, according to the U.S. government.
There are no easy solutions, but an obvious first step is to empower individuals to think critically about what they read online.
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More than half of the crimes registered in the city of Tashkent in 2025 were cybercrimes, according to the Tashkent City Prosecutor’s Office. With the expansion of digital services and financial transactions conducted online, criminals are following the money.
The Uzbek government knows this is a problem, but its missing the simplest solution: digital literacy.
Last year, Uzbekistan’s Interior Ministry’s Cybercrime Center told Gazeta.uz that theft and fraud involving bank cards are the most common crimes, including phishing and a variety of clever scams that convince individuals to surrender their banking details to criminals.
Uzbekistan’s population is young – with some 60 percent of the population under the age of 30 – and youth are presumed to be technologically adept. But given the skyrocketing rates of cybercrimes, it’s clear that digital literacy is lagging behind the threat.
Digital literacy skills are crucial in combatting cybercrimes. In the context of Indonesia, a group of scholars concluded that “low digital literacy contributes to the increasing vulnerability of individuals and organizations to cyber attacks.” These attacks include web defacement, stealer malware and ransomware, AI-based cyber threats, phishing, and more.
“Digital security is not only the responsibility of the government,” the scholars wrote, “but the public must also take part in protecting their data by being well-literate.”
Digital literacy is the ability to responsibly find, evaluate, utilize, share, and create content online; it shares obvious attributes with other forms of literacy, such as media literacy, especially when it comes to evaluating online information like a post on social media advertising a well-paying job abroad.
One survey-based study of youth and digital technology in Central Asia, which examined how youth use digital technology, made a clear link between media and digital literacy.
“Media and digital literacy — the capacity to locate, verify, and thoughtfully engage with online content — has become essential in an era marked by misinformation, algorithm-driven echo chambers, and information overload,” Farrukh Irnazarov wrote in a paper published last August by the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Silk Road Studies Program. Irnazarov identified a gap between stated values and actual behaviors, noting “youth overwhelmingly express a commitment to accuracy and factchecking, yet their actual behaviors often fall short of these ideals.”
And this has implications for cybersecurity: “Cybersecurity awareness remains low: personal data, including bank details, is often shared freely both online and offline.”
In an era defined by the instant gratification of endless scrolling on platforms like TikTok, and suffused with get-rich-quick schemes and clever tactics to get around regulations and get ahead, it is of little surprise that checking the facts – a brake on taking action – is one of the first habits to go.
And Uzbekistan’s crime statistics lay out the consequences.
Earlier this month Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev was briefed on proposals to fight cybercrime. In the readout, the Uzbek government stated that since 2020, there has been a 48-fold increase in reports of cybercrimes. In 2025, the readout noted, “82 percent of fraud cases and 76 percent of thefts were committed in cyberspace.” The material damage to individuals and companies exceeded 2 trillion Uzbek soms ($163.8 million).
The first proposal? Increasing citizens’ personal responsibility. “It has been proposed to establish administrative and criminal liability for allowing electronic payment instruments, crypto-wallets, SIM cards, and electronic accounts registered in their names to be used in the commission of cybercrimes.”
In short: Punish the person who fell for the scam.
Other proposals included introducing fines for companies that don’t comply with information and cybersecurity requirements, and legal liabilities for banks providing remote financial services for cybercrimes that result from non-compliance with established digital regulations.
None of the proposals mentioned touches on digital literacy.
Uzbekistan’s flagship digital strategy – Digital Uzbekistan 2030 – aims to develop the digital economy, and introduce modern information and communications technologies in all sectors. The relevant presidential decree mentions digital literacy once, in the context of establishing higher education institutions to improve digital literacy in the regions and train government employees. This barely scratches the surface as the opportunities for cybercrime explode.
Cybercrime and the consequences of low digital literacy are not problems unique to Uzbekistan. This week, 24.kg in neighboring Kyrgyzstan reported that online scammers advertising jobs with large salaries in the United Kingdom and Germany managed to steal $110,000 from 68 people in 2025. Last month, Kazakh authorities detained 20 suspects in Turkestan related to an internet and telephone fraud scheme they claim caused 125 million tenge ($258,900) in damages to 21 victims.
And these are not problems unique to Central Asia: Southeast Asia has earned the unfortunate moniker of the “scam capital of the world” on the back of massive online scams operated out of facilities in countries like Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos. These scam centers are often staffed by people who themselves had fallen victim to online scams (including some from Central Asia), and were trafficked to the region to work in prison-like conditions. The scale of the damage is immense. In 2024, Americans lost over $10 billion due to Southeast Asia-based scams, according to the U.S. government.
There are no easy solutions, but an obvious first step is to empower individuals to think critically about what they read online.
Catherine Putz is managing editor of The Diplomat.
Central Asia digital literacy
cybercrime in Uzbekistan