Cyber crimes claim 5.4m victims in Australia

CANBERRA - About 5.4 million Australians were targeted by cyber crimes, which cost the country A$1.65 billion ($1.68 billion) in the past 12 months, according to Norton's Cybercrime report 2012 released Thursday.

Hackers and cyber criminals were diverting their attention to new platforms such as smart phones and social networking, the report by the anti-virus company revealed. Globally, there were more than 556 million victims and the cost were $110 billion.

Even though 37 percent of Australians fell victims to cyber crime over the last year, and one in 10 people in the country admitted to falling victim to a scam or fake link on social networking. Less than half of them used any sort of security protections to help avoid social networking threats.

Only 55 percent used the privacy settings provided on sites like Facebook to help them control what information they share and with whom.