Australians are facing an increase in scams and card fraud, with the most common scam over the 2023-24 period having involved ‘buying and selling’, according to the latest data by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
The ABS has this month released figures from its multipurpose household survey (MPHS), inclusive of its personal fraud survey (PFS), which has sampled people over the age of 15 years.
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics
University of Wollongong Associate Professor, Joonsang Baek has said that a lack of security awareness and complacency can be a contributing factor to personal fraud attacks.
“If we interact with social media and so-called ‘cyber activities’ we lose our concentration on cybersecurity, we may be complacent, we just assume that everything should be fine,” Associate Professor Baek said.
The ABS data indicated that the most common age group to have experienced personal fraud in the last 12 months, from the time of the survey, was the age groups of 45-54 and 55-64, having a 3.8 per cent victimisation rate.
Relating to scams specifically, the data suggests that 44 per cent of people surveyed experienced a buying or selling scam, next followed by information request or phishing, then upfront payment and more.
The ABS has defined ‘buying or selling’ as instances of payment of fake invoices/products, the purchase of nonexistent goods and more.
Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics
Buying or selling has risen since 2021, with the victimisation rate being at 1.4 per cent in the 2023-24 year. Banks and financial institutions are warning consumers about common so-called ‘red flags’ to look out for.
Information requests and phishing are becoming more complex with the use of AI and ‘spear-phishing’ attacks.
“They use AI technology…in the past these scam emails and messages were quite dodgy, it didn’t look real,” Ass. Prof. Baek said.
“They do some work [called information gathering]…they might target 1000 people, so they collect their email addresses, maybe real names then they craft these messages or emails so that they look real, this is called ‘spear phishing’.
“Phishing is targeting random people, spear fishing is targeting certain people.”
He said every Australian could try to protect themselves from scams, including through multi-factor authentications and he has encouraged people to stay calm, vigilant and educated.
