In the News
One in 10 Australian Internet users have lost money to online identify fraud over the past year with losses totalling $1.286 billion, according to the VeriSign Online Fraud Barometer figures released today.
The findings represent a significant increase on the figures reported in June by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which surveyed Australians in 2007 and found that just over 800,000 had been victims of personal fraud. Back then, combined losses were $977 million.
VeriSign's figures suggest 1.37 million Australians, or 10 per cent of internet users, have fallen victim to online fraud in the past year. The results are based on a survey of 2510 Australians aged 18 years and over conducted in June this year by Galaxy Research.
Advertisement: Story continues belowAsked whether the figures seemed accurate, Detective Inspector Bruce Van Der Graaf, head of the NSW Police Computer Crime Unit, said "that sounds within the range of probabilities to me".
"The deception involved in a lot of ID fraud is easy for people to overlook - people really have to be on their toes and be alert for things like what looks like a phishing email, which is still one of the main ways of losing your internet banking details," he said.
The survey found that those affected had lost an average of $1000 over the last 12 months and that 18-24 year olds were most at risk, losing on average $1619.
Detective Superintendent Brian Hay, head of the QLD Police fraud squad, was not surprised at the finding that young people were losing the most money.
"Recently I was asked to go and provide a presentation to a group of university students, and we tend to think that our young people do understand the internet and they know how to avoid scams and they know how to pick a fake website, but you know what the reality is they're not equipped for it at all," he said.
"Many of the students thought that if the website looked professional then it was OK. Even though we've got our youth of today embracing the technology they're still not prepared for a lot of the threats that are there, and that comes back to they haven't been educated on it."
Detective Superintendent Hay said VeriSign's survey of 2500 people was "very interesting from a data collection perspective because that would be one of the largest surveys to date ... certainly in terms of currency."
Australians appear to be more gullible than the British, with the same survey conducted by VeriSign there finding the average losses were only $623 per person.
Cyber security consultant Alastair MacGibbon, former head of the AFP's High Tech Crimes unit, said there were four main ways people could have their credentials compromised online:
1. Entering details such as credit card and banking information into a website that is run by crooks.
2. Handing card details over to a legitimate site but they are then stolen from the site itself through a security flaw.
3. Man in the middle attacks, where a legitimate site is infected by malware and credit card details are stolen from users as the transaction is underway.
4. Having a virus planted on your own computer which sucks up credit card details and passwords and sends them to criminals.
Even offline there have been recent cases, such as at McDonald's in Western Australia, where the EFTPOS terminal has been hijacked and money has been stolen.
MacGibbon said people could protect themselves against ID fraud by ensuring their own computers were free from viruses and by transacting only with sites that have security features like trust seals (provided by companies such as VeriSign) and secure connections (signified by https:// in the address bar, a padlock icon or green address bar).
The VeriSign survey found that 69 per cent of 18-24 year olds did not check for these enhanced security features when transacting online
MacGibbon said people should also consider other methods of paying aside from entering their credit card, such as PayPal.
"You need to check your credit card statements and determine whether transactions on there were authorised or not, and notify immediately your credit card issuer if there's something on there that you don't recognise," he said.
VeriSign's general manager for Asia-Pacific, Jim Drake said organisations also needed to be more transparent with customers around how they will interact with them online.
"Some organisations will tell you how they will interact with you I.e. they will say 'we will never request personal or private information via email'," he said.
"We're right behind organisations being more transparent and educating their consumers."
A recent inquiry into cyber-crime by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Communications recommended that Australians be unable to access the internet without having anti-virus and firewall programs installed and a virus-free PC.
