Following high profile data breaches at Optus and Medibank, Chief Superintendent Adam Rice of SA Police’s Serious Crime Coordination Branch said he would expect to see an increase in identity theft if that data is sold.

“Those data breaches in recent times are significant – there’s millions of pieces of information that have been taken,” he said in an interview with InDaily.

“We’re not actually seeing a huge uptake in criminality linked to that release of information at the moment – but we expect over time that we will.

“It’s just a matter of time before those credentials will be used for nefarious means.”

It comes as a ransomware group released Medibank client data including names addresses and birthdays, with the health insurer facing a possible class action over the hacking of sensitive information for 9.7 million of its customers.

Rice said the theft of personal information is of particular concern if 100 points of Personal Identifying Information or ‘PII’ is obtained by criminals.

“100 points is really what you need to verify your identity to someone, so if I want to open up a mobile phone account I need 100 points identification to do that,” he said.

“It is very simple and easy on dark web marketplaces to purchase stolen driver’s licenses, Medicare cards, and photos of those cards to be able to prove your identity.

“That’s probably the starting point for why people want that personal identifiable information to be able to start up false bank accounts, or obtain loans.

“Often people at the end of the day will go and try and get their own personal loan for their own legitimate reason and banks will tell them they’ve already defaulted on two loans, leaving them with a damaged credit rating.”

Rice urged all South Australians to be vigilant with their online security as part of Scams Awareness Week which concludes on Friday.

He said cyber-crime was increasing by about 15% year on year.

“It’s about always making sure that passwords are updated, that you’re not using the same password across multiple platforms, all those really simple things,” he said.

“Most of the scams have an element of authority attached to them, whether it’s [a scammer] posing as the police, or some other organisation pressuring you to do something, those agencies won’t do that.”

Scamwatch, a website run by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), collects information on scam trends and reported a significant increase in losses to scams this year.

Nationally there were 286,600 reports to Scamwatch in 2021, and reported losses of around $324 million. By August this year, however, there has already been a reported $381 million in losses.

A cryptocurrency investor, Rhys Barrett told InDaily how he was scammed out of $2000.

“I was on a discord page looking up some NFTs and things like that, I met this guy who invited me to his trading page,” Barrett said.

“After a while he got me to sign up to a trading page and I had to deposit some money.”

Barrett explained how after first taking the man’s advice on cryptocurrency trading, and depositing the funds, he realised he had been scammed.

“It didn’t go anywhere from there because he was a scam artist – I was pretty annoyed and let down for false hope – I didn’t think I’d ever be as successful as [he portrayed] but I just got left in the dark,” the 27-year-old said.

“The police have said they can’t do anything and it is pretty much untraceable.

“Now that I look back his offer was just silly, so If it sounds too good to be true it probably is.”

Chief Superintendent Rice said South Australian investigators are seeing a rise in investment-style scams.

“Complex and very organised groups are producing websites that are really really slick and look quite legitimate,” he said.

“They’ll also be super responsive and offer a great service, which draws people in.”

Rice said the rise of cybercrime is unlikely to be countered on a local level, with community awareness being the state’s best defence.

“We’re unlikely to be able to arrest our way out of this space because it’s one thing to arrest people who are on Australian soil or in South Australia, but most of these threats are coming from overseas from countries that don’t have good legislative platforms or structures.”