Cyber fraud victims lose an average of £371 this year
As 33.6m of us are expected to storm online stores this Monday, new research from Barclays and Kaspersky Lab reveals that 4m of us were hit by cyber fraud in the last year.
Victims were stung for a total of £1.5bn – an average of £371 per person.
Shoppers are expected to rush for online deals at the start of next week – on a day dubbed Cyber Monday – as we seek to get our Christmas shopping out of the way.
Alex Grant, managing director of fraud prevention at Barclays, warns that "cyber-criminals will have a field day if precautions aren’t taken."
While 82 per cent of over 55s take security precautions online, just 62 per cent of 16 to 24 year olds do the same, according to a survey of 3,000 adults.
Tony Neate, CEO of Get Safe Online says that "scams are evolving and getting more sophisticated all the time" such that shoppers get caught out.
There's not just fraud to worry about, but malware too. David Emm, senior security researcher at Kaspersky Lab, says that in 2013 more than one in three people encountered malware when searching the web.
In March cabinet office minister Francis Maude said that cyber attacks are responsible for "losses to the UK economy running into the billions of pounds."