Researchers say more needs to be done to protect people from online fraud, which is "fast becoming one of the most prevalent and costly crimes of the 21st century" as programs aimed at limiting its harm disappear.
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The true cost of online fraud is unclear because many victims do not come forward. But in the first six months of 2019 alone, more than 30,200 Australians made Scamwatch reports and said they had lost a combined $34.68 million to internet-based scams.
ACT residents made almost 750 of those reports and were duped out of about $930,000 online.
Scams have been in the headlines this week as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission runs its annual Scams Awareness Week.
But as more services move online and the risk of falling victim to online fraud grows, proactive initiatives aimed at limiting its harm have been withdrawn.
A new Australian Institute of Criminology report said the commission's Scams Disruption Project wrapped up in 2017, while government programs in South Australia and Western Australia closed in 2014 - all because of limited resources.
"Given the large amounts of money lost to online fraud in Australia every year, it may be prudent for such proactive initiatives to be reintroduced in each of the Australian states and territories," the report said.
"The financial intelligence collected by the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) will be important, but the information may need to be shared with a larger pool of entities, including those in the private sector, than is currently permitted."
Report authors Catherine Emami, Russell Smith and Penny Jorna said more work needed to be done on determining the factors that contributed to people becoming victims of online fraud, and that organisations like consumer affairs groups and financial institutions had to join required governments in being proactive.
"While education about online fraud has been a priority of Australian governments, more needs to be done to keep people safe while online," they wrote.
The report said education about fraud must target areas including how to distinguish between false and legitimate websites.
"These strategies will help consumers to increase their own awareness of fraud risks and reduce their own vulnerabilities," it said.
A study conducted for the report revealed that of the online fraud victims surveyed, 47.7 per cent who had sent money overseas did no prior research on the person or organisation they were paying, while 36 per cent sent money overseas to someone they did not personally know.
The researchers said this finding reinforced the need for programs like those that had been withdrawn in recent years.
A spokeswoman for the ACT government's Access Canberra said it educated the Canberra community about scams and online fraud through a range of campaigns.
"These include proactive, cyclical education and awareness campaigns such as Scams Awareness Week and romance and online dating scams in February each year," she said.
The spokeswoman said this year's romance and online dating scams campaign reached more than 23,000 people through targeted Facebook advertising and other social media, and the Access Canberra website. Canberra's population is more than 420,000.
"These campaigns provide advice and information to the community on the types of scams prevalent each year including social media and online scams, how the community can identify a scam, what precautions they can take to prevent being scammed, and what to do if they have been scammed," the spokeswoman said.
"All year round, there is information available to the community on websites such as Access Canberra as well as the ACCC's Scamwatch website."
