It seems that Australians lost more than $3.1 billion from scams in 2022.
👉 Background: In the early 2000’s, scams consisted of far-fetched emails from Nigerian princes. But now, the scam industry has become a whoooole lot more sophisticated.
👉 What happened: Now, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission reckons that Australians lost more than $3.1 billion from scams in 2022. And the biggest scam category was investment scams - coming in at $1.5 billion.
👉 What else: But despite being more wary of scams than ever before, Australians lost more money in 2022 than any previous year.
💡Regulation almost always lags behind innovation. While this is normally said about innovative technology, it also applies to the innovation of cyber crime… including scammers.
💡Since scams are becoming increasingly elaborate, the ACCC reckons banks need to take more preventative measures to reduce the chance of scammy bank transfers. This is what banks in the UK have been forced to do following legislation in 2019.
💡In Australia, we’re seeing scams grow in size and sophisticated each and every year. And the big cyberattacks to Optus, Medibank and Latitude certainly aren’t helping.
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