At a time when bogus offers flood email inboxes, JOHN HARRIS looks at how Australian lost $1 billion to scams in the past year..

Email "phishing scams" were one of the most common ways of ripping off Australians last year claims an Australian Bureau of Statistics report.

Phishing and related scams involve a fraudulent request, usually via email or instant messaging, that purports to be from a business or bank and seeks to acquire personal information such as your account number, password or credit card details.

A phishing variant is called "vishing" in which voice telephone calls seek to gain access to your personal details.

Profiling a nationwide plague that defrauded nearly $1 billion from Australians, the ABS Personal Fraud report estimated that 806,000 Australians were "victimised" by at least one personal fraud incident during a 12 months period.

The ABS reckons that its interview results suggest that more than 450,000 victims actually lost money to fraud in the 12 months prior to interview. The total financial loss of was $977 million - causing an mean loss of $2156 per person.

About 2.2 per cent of the South Australians surveyed - one in 50 - reported that they had been victims of personal fraud.

The ABS Personal Fraud report mentions that Australians are losing their money, and their trust to:

• Credit or bank card scams involving unauthorised use of a credit or bank card
• Identity theft involving the theft and fraudulent use of personal details or documents such as a driver's licence, tax file number or passport to conduct unauthorised transactions including conducting business or opening accounts in another person's name or otherwise using a person's identity without permission
• Lottery scam where a person is advised that they have won a lottery and asked to provide personal information to prove their identity or send a fee or bank account details in order to collect the prize
• Pyramid scheme, a multi-level scam where people pay a fee to join a scheme, with subsequent earnings and promotions dependent upon recruiting more people into the operations
• Unsolicited fraudulent financial advice or offers such as share promotion, investment seminar or telemarketing, real estate scam, etc.
• Chain letter inviting you to send money or goods to a person at the top of a list
• Advance fee fraud, an unsolicited request to transfer funds into a person's bank account, often involving an elaborate 'story' in which a large sum of money needs to be transferred, and the respondent's account is needed to move the money.

Lotteries and pyramid schemes were the most common types of personal fraud, with phishing coming in third place.

So, other than staying off the Internet and avoiding any contact with people, what can you do to protect yourself from exposure to fraud? Here are a few simple rules.

Keep your browser up-to-date with the latest security patches and protect your PC with current software to filter viruses, spam and spyware.

Avoid unnecessary risks by not entering personal contact, credit card or account details to a website that looks suspicious. Try not to use your laptop for financial transactions over public wireless hotspots

Avoid using public computers in a café or a library for financial transactions. If you must use a public computer, don't save passwords or user IDs on the browser and learn how to empty the browser cache and history before closing the computer

Remember to check your credit card reports to make sure no one has "hijacked" your identity to make false credit card purchases. 

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