New data from the National Anti Scam-Centre shows older Australians are increasingly losing money through scams on Facebook and Instagram, while reported losses are declining from telephone and SMS scams.
Older Australians lost about $5 million to scams on social media platforms in the months leading up to Christmas last year, an increase of more than 50 per cent from the previous three months.
Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones has slammed Meta’s efforts to tackle scams on its platforms as “not good enough”.“Other avenues are having the noose tightened, while the social media platforms are not having their systems improved. That’s where the scammers are going. It is pretty clear in the data,” Jones said.
In a submission last month to the government’s consultation on the proposed scheme, Meta said the obligation “to prevent further losses to a consumer who has been affected by a scam may be impossible for digital platforms to achieve” due to the way in which scammers “rapidly evolve their tactics in attempts to evade detection and enable persistence”.
ACCC figures show the totality of reported losses to Scamwatch plummeted in the second half of 2023 after rampantly increasing in the first half of the year. However, the data indicates that over 65-year-olds are increasingly falling victim to social media scams, with losses among this cohort up 57 per cent on the previous quarter, with Meta’s platforms accounting for 81 per cent of all social media scam reports made by that cohort.
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