The amount of money that Kiwis reported losing through online scams tripled to $33 million last year, cyber safety organisation NetSafe has reported. The figure reversed a trend that had seen reported losses drift down from just over $13m in 2015 to $10m in 2017. Cocker said NetSafe had seen "waves of successful scams hitting the country", with fake "sextortion" scams being the most recent trend. Efforts to reduce losses to online scams have almost exclusively focussed on education, but Cocker said the "drastic" increase in reported fraud losses showed a new approach was needed. But Cocker said scam victims experienced losses that were more than financial.

Source: Stuff April 02, 2019 15:56 UTC