Fergie's Tech Blog

Australia: Credit-Card Fraud Soars

Nick Gardner writes on Adelaide Now:

Identity theft has reached epidemic proportions in Australia, more than one in five people falling victim to credit-card fraudsters or computer hackers.

The Identity Crimes Report, commissioned by Veda Advantage and conducted by Galaxy Research, found more than 1.5 million people had their credit cards skimmed, and 1.2 million had their bank accounts illegally accessed.

Many more had their post intercepted containing their pin numbers or other crucial information that can be used to create a false identity.

Australia's lapse in deploying anti-fraud technology, and the economic slowdown, are blamed for the rapid rise in crimes – up at least 23 per cent on a year ago.

"Desperate times create desperate people," said Kelvin Kirk of Veda Advantage. "Higher unemployment creates more crime, we know that," he said.

posted by Fergie @ 9/30/2009 09:40:00 PM