By Mary Ward
Frustrated Australians reported a record number of scams to the consumer watchdog last year. However, financial losses declined as more people spotted the con before handing over their cash.
According to data from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the reported amount of money lost to scams in 2023 was $480.7 million, a 5.5 per cent decrease on 2022’s $569 million.
Reports to the watchdog’s Scamwatch service increased by 26.1 per cent in 2023, with more than 301,000 instances of scam behaviour reported by members of the public.
More than a third of those reports (109,000) related to phishing scams, as Australians became sick of waking up to phony texts from “AusPost” or receiving emails about an unexpected Amazon delivery.
Despite more than 30,000 extra complaints about phishing compared to 2022, the increase in money lost through the scams was comparably small: $26.1 million compared to $24.6 million the previous year, with an increasing number of people reporting the scam without experiencing financial loss.
Dr Suranga Seneviratne, a cybersecurity expert at the University of Sydney, was hesitant to say people were getting better at recognising scams, noting there were many other ways victims may report, such as through their bank.
While the ACCC received reports of $569 million of money lost in scams during 2022, the total estimated figure is closer to $3.1 billion.
Regardless, Seneviratne said the data was promising.
“The numbers show there is probably an improvement in awareness among people, but ideally we would like to see the trend continuing for another couple of years before we say that for certain,” he said.
“We’ve done a few things to try to fight the scams, and hopefully there is better education out there.”
The federal government plans to roll out its $10 million SMS Sender ID Registry, which will prevent scammers from manipulating the sender ID on a text message to impersonate prominent businesses and services, by the end of this year.
The banking industry has also made a $100 million investment in a new “confirmation of payee” system, which will ensure people can confirm they are transferring money to the person they intend to.
Jobs and employment scams were the fastest-growing type in 2023, an ACCC spokesperson said. Australians lost $24.7 million to fake job applications over the year.
The scams often begin with a fake job ad on social media before the scammer diverts their victim to a messenger service, such as WhatsApp. Victims are pressured to invest money in return for a salary they never receive.
Most reports about these scams came from people aged 18 to 44.
Investment scams continued to be the greatest source of lost money, with $293 million in losses from 8161 reports. However, 2023 saw a decrease in both measures.
“With the current economic conditions it’s expected that people might fall more for [job scams],” Seneviratne said, noting it was interesting that investment scams had declined given the attractiveness of such schemes during an economic downturn.
The ACCC has issued recent warnings about particular phishing scams, including loyalty points scams, ticketing scams and, recently, a scam which impersonated popular accommodation website Booking.com, leading to more than $337,000 in losses.
Seneviratne said AI had the potential to make scamming much more sophisticated, as technology already struggled to keep pace with fraudulent messages and emails.
“It’s rare that a mass scam email goes through to a main Gmail inbox, for example, but a billing fraud email can still go through,” he said, noting more sophisticated scams were already moving away towards closed system messenger apps.
“The concern with AI is that it can use the information from your social media to write a message, and that can be scaled. We are not there yet, but it may become as simple as sending out a mass message.”
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