🗞️Scam Prevention Efforts Pay Off: 13.1% Decrease in Losses

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For the first time since 2016, Australians lost $2.74 billion to scams in 2023, a 13.1% decrease from the year before. The federal government claims that although the National Anti-Scam Centre is making the public aware of frauds that they should be wary of, more needs to be done to prevent further phishing, romance, and investment scams.

The report uses data from Scamwatch, ReportCyber, the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange (AFCX), IDCARE, and ASIC.

It shows that Aussies made over 601,000 scam reports to these organizations in 2023, which is an 18.5% increase on 2022. In terms of financial losses, investment scams caused the most harm ($1.3 billion), followed by remote access scams ($256 million) and romance scams ($201.1 million).

With scam activity on the rise globally in recent years, the report shows that targeted and coordinated disruption activities across government, industry, law enforcement, and community organizations are leading to lower overall financial losses.

“It’s great to see that our coordinated scam prevention, detection, and disruption initiatives are working to stop criminals from getting their hands on funds and protect consumers,” said ACCC Deputy Chair Catriona Lowe. We'll keep up the good work because the losses are still too high, and behind the numbers are real people who have lost money, often every last cent, to scams.

Ms. Lowe said that's why we're committed to making sure there are no weak spots for scammers to exploit. A Scams Code Framework with strong, mandatory, and enforceable obligations on banks, telcos, and digital platforms will be central to this.

"Good data and intel sharing is also key, and we'll be adding more parties sending data into the National Anti-Scams Centre. We've made good progress on sending data out.", She added.

Scam trends

The Targeting Scams report shows some concerning emerging scam trends, despite the overall decrease in losses reported. There were increases in reports of financial losses to phishing scams, payment redirection scams, and job scams.

The National Anti-Scam Centre is working to integrate data from many sources to provide more details on trends. The trends below are based on Scamwatch data only and should not be extrapolated to the combined data.

Older people suffered the greatest harm at the hands of scammers. People over the age of 65 were the only age group to experience an increase in reported losses. People over 65 saw their losses jump by 13.3% in 2023, reaching $120 million. All other age groups saw losses drop. People over 65 were especially hard hit by investment scams. Many reported significant losses to scams initiated on social media.

Text messages were the most common way people reported being contacted (109,621 reports, up 37.3% from 2022). But scam calls resulted in the highest losses ($116 million). Social media contact resulted in the second-highest losses, up 16.5% to $93.5 million.

Job scams cost people a whopping $24.3 million, up 151.2% from last year. People from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities were especially hard hit, as were people looking for part-time work or seeking to supplement their income and ease cost-of-living pressures.

“Scammers are financial criminals who use sophisticated technology and psychology to rob Australians of their money and personal information,” Ms Lowe said.

"Reports to Scamwatch show that scammers are targeting older Australians with retirement savings. These folks may be looking for investment opportunities. We know of a recent case where an elderly woman lost her life savings after seeing a deepfake Elon Musk video on social media. She clicked the link and registered her details online. She was assigned a 'financial advisor' and could see on an online dashboard that she was apparently making returns. But she couldn't withdraw her money."

“While the National Anti-Scam Centre has made a positive impact since it was established on July 1, 2023, there is much more work to do. Over the next two years, we will continue to invest in technology-based solutions that will centralize intelligence and distribute information to those who can act on it—such as banks to freeze accounts, telcos to block calls or SMSs, and digital platforms to take down websites or accounts,” Ms. Lowe said.

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“We’ll team up with other organizations to take down the most harmful scams. We’ll also keep spreading awareness about scams to the people most at risk, as we work towards our common goal of making Australia a harder target for scammers,” Ms. Lowe said.

The data in this report is for the calendar year 1 January to 31 December 2023. These are the main places that hold data about both scam losses and reports. We've made some adjustments to address duplication in reporting and to remove unreliable high-loss reports from within those datasets.

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