Source: joshua hoehne/unsplash.
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What if the government was doing everything it could to stop thieves making off with our money, except the one thing that could really work?
That’s how it looks when it comes to scams, which are attempts to trick us out of our funds, usually by getting us to hand over our identities or bank details or transfer funds.
Last year we lost an astonishing $2.74 billion to scammers. That’s more than $5,200 per minute – and that’s only the scams we know about from the 601,000 Australians who made reports. Many more would have kept quiet.
If the theft of $5,200 per minute seems over the odds for a country Australia’s size, a comparison with the United Kingdom suggests you are right.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter is The Conversation's business and economy editor and a Visiting Fellow at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the ANU.
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