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Why scammers think Australians are “easy pray”

Scammers call Australians ‘easy prey’ because they are considered wealthy and trusting.

An ABC report found that these highly organised and sophisticated operations believed that, unlike American law enforcement, the AFP just doesn’t go after them—so why is that?

In Friday’s episode of The Briefing, Sacha Barbour Gatt is joined by cyber security expert and former AFP detective Nigel Phair to explain what makes Australians the perfect targets.

Nigel says part of the reason Australians are a scammer’s dream, is our reliance on devices. 

“Well, we’re a rich jurisdiction. We’re a very well-connected jurisdiction. Everyone’s got some type of mobile smart device in their pocket. We’re used to being online. We do social media, we do email, we do banking, we do all sorts of things. So when you get approached online for something that appears to be believable, then we fall prey for it because we’re used to doing so much of our lives online.”

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He says education is key to preventing scammers from being successful. 

“We need to change the perception that we fall prey to scams of all shapes and sizes of all ills. That’s what we’ve got to do. There’s lots and lots of things we can do. All we have at the moment is really piecemeal education and that doesn’t work… if we look at the stats, you know, the numbers keep rising.”

He said a more holistic approach is necessary. 

“It’s law enforcement, it’s government, it’s the banks, it’s us. And I see a lot of stories online about people that fall prey to all sorts of scams. And it’s terrible. Across the board, terrible.People lose money, sometimes a lot of money,”

“But we still need to remember there’s a lot of personal responsibility required in this rather than blaming, well, I sent this money to somewhere and the bank should have stopped it.”