The report found that 44% of consumers were affected by cyber crime in the past 12 months.
It said that as as a result, victims globally lost US$172 billion – an average of US$142 per victim. The figure for Australia was US$1.9 billion in total. Each of these people also spent about 24 hours — or almost three full workdays — dealing with the aftermath.
A cyber crime was defined as, but not limited to, identity theft, credit card fraud or having your account password compromised.
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The most common cyber crimes experienced by consumers or someone they knew included:
- Having a device infected by a virus or other security threat (53%);
- Experiencing debit or credit card fraud (38%);
- Having an account password compromised (34%);
- Encountering unauthorised access to or hacking of an email or social media account (34%);
- Making a purchase online that turned out to be a scam (33%); and
- Clicking on a fraudulent email or providing sensitive (personal/financial) information in response to a fraudulent email (32%).
The report found that victims shared three common characteristics:
- they were over-confident about their cyber security prowess;
- they used multiple devices; and
- they were not inclined to practice the basics.
While millennials were the most cyber-savvy, they made simple security mistakes like bad password management (70%). Sixty percent experienced a cyber crime incident.
Baby boomers and seniors were the safest age groups, with 61% of baby boomers and two-thirds of seniors using different passwords for different sites.
But baby boomers lost the most globally due to cyber crime - US$167, which was 15% more than the average.
Forty-one percent of those surveyed had lost trust in their respective government's ability to manage their data and personal information.
Only 22% agreed that stealing information online was the same as stealing things in real life; 63% disagreed with this proposition.
