Scam losses hit $3b as report warns Kiwis face rising online fraud – The Front Page

It’s been revealed that Kiwis lost a record $3 billion to scams this year.

That’s a 30% increase from $2.3b last year.

Netsafe and the Global Anti-Scam Alliance’s State of Scams in New Zealand report shows that scammers are getting more sophisticated – and victims are facing persistent barriers to reporting and recovering their losses.

Netsafe’s Sean Lyons told The Front Page that about 82% of Kiwis reported experiencing a scam at some point in the last year.

“So this is not about occasional access, and if you extrapolate the figures, you’re probably talking about a person experiencing over 150 different scam attempts in a year,” Lyons said.

“For a lot of people, it’s probably becoming the norm.”

Lyons fears the proliferation of scams in our daily lives might lead us to become complacent.

“That’s a concern. When we start to feel that things are a bit normal, maybe sometimes our guard goes down,” he said.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about:

• The scale of scams
• How scammers operate
• Common types of scams
• Prevention and solutions
• The impact scams have on Kiwis.

The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.

You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.