One in 20 hit by cybercrime last year

Five per cent of Australians - more than 772,000 people - were victims of identity theft last year, according to a new survey.

According to research commissioned by Veda, 17 per cent people have been the victims of cybercrime involving theft of personal information at some time.

Eighty-two per cent of survey respondents said they were concerned about having their personal information stolen.

People most likely to be victims of cybercrime are members of Gen Y (people born in the 1980s and 1990s). Twenty per cent of people in this cohort report having been victims of cybercrime, compared with 18 per cent of Gen Xers and 14 per cent of Baby Boomers.

Veda also found that eight per cent of people avoid using a credit card online because of security concerns.

Veda is promoting its Identity Watch service as a tool that allows people to monitor their online security.

Originally part of Veda's Secure Sentinel service and also offered as part of the VedaScore service, Identity Watch is now available as a standalone service.

Consumers give Identity Watch their email, credit card, bank account, Medicare and passport details and the service monitors the internet for any illegal trading of their information. If it finds anything it sends the consumer an alert.

Veda's head of cybercrime, Fiona Long, said the alerts give people time to contact a bank or government agency before too much (or any) damage is done.

Long said Veda's cybercrime team had infiltrated the dark web and offered consumers a "high likelihood" that it would pick up any identity thefts.

The real figures on cybercrime may be significantly under-reported. The City of London Police has reported recently that up to 80 per cent of online crimes go unreported in the United Kingdom.

According to a Finextra report, City of London Police chief Adrian Leppard said the scale of the threat was much greater than the public knew.

He said this was largely a result of banks' unwillingness to report crimes.

"Banks are happy to write off incidents as costs, thereby costing the consumer collectively and funding ongoing cyber-criminality," Leppard said.