CANBERRA - Almost half of Australian internet users were the victim of a cybercrime in the last 12 months, a government report published on Thursday said.

The report, which was compiled by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) based on surveys of over 10,000 internet users, found that 47.4 percent of respondents said they had been a victim of a cybercrime in the preceding 12 months.

Almost two-thirds of respondents, 63.9 percent, said they had been a victim of at least one cybercrime in their lifetime.

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Online abuse and harassment was the most common form of cybercrime, affecting 26.8 percent of survey participants in the last 12 months, followed by identity crime, malware, and fraud and scams.

The most common type of fraud and scams reported over the 12-month period was victims paying money or providing sensitive information when they were trying to buy a product or service from a fake or fraudulent seller online.

Among all respondents, 20 percent said they were victims of two or more types of cybercrimes in the 12 months prior to the survey.

The survey found that 50.7 percent of Australians used different passwords for secure online accounts in 2024, down from 53.2 percent in 2023.

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The proportion of Australians who regularly updated their passwords on secure accounts, used a secure password manager and used password protection on their router also declined.