New NSA research about online scams

Between 30% and 35% of older Australians may have been scammed online, according to new NSA research.

The figure comes from the 2025 National Seniors Social Survey, in which 4,766 people answered the question, "Have you ever been the victim of online fraud or a scam where you lost money or had your identity used fraudulently?”

A total of 30.4% of respondents answered “yes” and a further 4.4% were unsure. No time limit was put on the survey question, so answers included scams that occurred years ago.

Nevertheless, these high numbers are high.

However, they may not be surprising given over $159 billion was scammed from Australians aged 55 or over in 2024 alone. And that only includes scams reported to the National Anti-Scam Centre – the real number may be much higher.

Groups who got scammed the most

When we looked at the social and personal characteristics of the survey participants, we found that not every group is equally likely to have been scammed.

The proportions were higher among people who described their level of financial comfort as “tight” rather than “comfortable”. Almost half the people experiencing a “very tight” financial situation at the time of the survey had been scammed (47%).

People who described their health as “poor” or “very poor” had also experienced scams in high numbers (43%), and those in “fair” health were scammed more than those with good or excellent health too (37%).

Greater proportions of people with less than $200,000 in savings and investments, and people with a religion that is important to them were more often scammed than their counterparts too.

Notably, age was not a significant factor despite the stereotypes of older people being more vulnerable to scams.

Common scam types

Scam victims were invited to write a comment about the scam and most (around 1,080 people) did so.

Their comments touched on various topics, but a common one was a description of what happened to them. From these comments we gleaned the most common scam types they experienced.

In almost half the cases the victims did nothing to make themselves vulnerable other than engaging in ordinary online transactions.

Around 450 of these had funds taken from their credit card or bank account, often without their knowledge.

Others were scammed by buying items from dodgy online sellers that seemed legitimate. The scammers took their money but never sent the item or sent a poor-quality item instead.

But respondents also reported numerous scam types in which the victims were enticed to take actions that ultimately made them vulnerable.

Some were duped when the scammer emailed or called them pretending to be a known business such as a telco or energy company or intercepted an invoice and changed the payment details. The victims then unlocked their online bank access for the scammers or paid bills that weren’t real.

The "Hey mum, I dropped my phone in the toilet” scam also caught a few respondents out, as did other similar scams in which scammers pretended to be someone they knew and asked for cash.

Fake security warnings on a computer screen and investments too good to be true were other relatively common scam types reported in the survey.

Some commenters had their identities stolen instead of money. Scammers then used their identities for nefarious purposes, including to take out loans, to post child pornography on Facebook, or to scam people in the victim’s network.