Two thirds of Australians aged 15 years and over were exposed to a scam in 2021-22, according to figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
William Milne, ABS head of crime and justice statistics, said: "The results of The Personal Fraud Survey showed that 65 per cent of people received a scam offer or request in 2021-22, up from 55 per cent in the previous year."
People were most commonly exposed to a scam over the phone (48 per cent) or by text message (47 per cent), with exposure via text message doubling from 23 per cent in 2020-21 to 47 per cent in 2021-22.
"While more people were exposed to scams this year, we found that the number responding to scams has actually decreased to 552,000. The survey shows that 2.7 per cent of Australians responded to a scam in 2021-22 down from 3.6 per cent in 2020-21," Mr Milne said.
The results also showed that more people are reporting their experiences to authorities. Of those who responded to a scam, 57 per cent reported their most serious incident, up from 50 per cent in 2020-21.
"About one third reported to a bank or financial institution, which remains the most common authority scams are reported to. However, we have recently seen a notable increase in reporting to the police, up from 8.2 per cent in 2020-21 to 14 per cent in 2021-22," Mr Milne said.
The Personal Fraud publication provides information about the prevalence of card fraud, identity theft, online impersonation, and selected scam types. The publication also includes key sociodemographic characteristics of those experiencing each fraud type.
Grab 1.
So, the Personal Fraud survey showed us that about two thirds of Australians aged fifteen and over were exposed to a scam in the last 12 months. So, we're talking about 13.2 million people, which was up from 11.1 million in the previous financial year.
Grab 2.
Some of the scams people were exposed to included, information requests also known as phishing scams, financial (advice) scams, and computer support scams.
Grab 3.
People are exposed to scams in lots of ways, such as over the phone and via email. While we've seen an increase across all these modes, by far the largest increase is the number of people receiving scams by text messages, which has doubled in the last year from 23% of Australians to 47%.
Grab 4.
What's really interesting about the rise in our exposure to scams, is that we are actually responding to them less. We found that people are becoming more aware of scams and are less likely to provide money, personal information, or click on links associated with scams. We saw the victimisation rate actually fall from 3.6% of Australians last financial year, to 2.7% this (financial) year.
Grab 5.
Even though people are responding less to scams, when they do, they are now more likely to report to an authority. We found that of the half a million people who responded to a scam this year, 57% reported their most recent incident, which is up from 50% last year.
