Slam the Scam Day helps to raise awareness of the risks associated with scams and provides people with tools to deal with them.

Our grandparents are not the only ones who are scammed, young people are targeted daily. 

According to Scam Watch, employment scams almost tripled in 2023 costing Australians more than $24 million.

Employment scams are often targeted at young people.

“Scammers will set up fake job adverts and may ask them to pay a sum of money to actually secure a job or interview,” says Caitriona Forde, a cybersecurity awareness and culture expert.  

According to Scam Watch in December 2023 there were 21,545 reports of scams and more than $25m lost.

“Scammers know that younger generations are very tech savvy, and there are more opportunities to target them and therefore they are more at risk,” says Mrs Forde. 

She says sextortion scams are common with the younger generation and occur when people are convinced to send nudes or explicit pictures of themselves. Scammers then blackmail the victim by saying they will publish the explicit photos if they aren’t sent a certain amount of money.

According to the Australian Federal Police, recent data shows there are 300 reports of sextortion targeting children each month.

Scams or fraud can have lifelong impacts on victims. 

Co-founder of identity verification agency Personr Charlie Westerman had his identity stolen and 60 fraudulent credit enquiries put on his file which resulted in thousands of dollars in legal fees. 

“We leverage credit for so many life milestones – like buying your first home, and unfortunately that’s not something I’ll be able to do for a long time,” says Mr Westerman.

“Identity theft doesn’t have a clear resolution, it’s not like the banks suddenly forgive you.”

Experts agree knowing how to avoid scams and how to be cyber-safe can be tricky.

Mrs Forbes says it’s important to have a healthy level of suspicion and not trust everything online.

Tips from Mrs Forbes to protect yourself from scams: 

• Have a healthy level of suspicion.
• Sort out your personal security by setting up multi-factor authentication.
• Be mindful of your money and how you purchase things online.
• Have separate email accounts for your personal and junk mail account.

Nick Ahrens offers this advice:

• Be very vigilant, and have a zero-trust mentality.
• Check emails, and make sure they are from the real person.
• Use secure networks like VPNs.