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Australians are intensely vulnerable to scams. In the ACCC’s annual targeting scams report (2021), the consumer watchdog found that across Scamwatch, ReportCyber, 12 financial institutions and government agencies, a total of over $2 billion was reported as stolen in the last year.
These scams disproportionately affect older citizens, with the 65+ age demographic filing the most reports, and the 45-54, 55-64 and 65+ demographics reporting the greatest percentage of loses to scams. Within Scamwatch alone, the biggest source of the loss was investment scams, followed by dating & romance scams, false billing and remote access scams, but elsewhere other scams were reported to be more common. For example, another report found that one in four Australians have fallen victim to identity fraud.
According to that report, the individual impact of identity fraud is relatively mild – the misuse of personal information costs the average victim $300 on average. However, it also takes 34 hours to deal with the fallout from the fraud, and can cause extreme anxiety. There’s also the potential that, over time, the theft of identity can result in damaged credit scores, illegal behaviour being conducted in that person’s name, and other intangible costs.
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