By Anhar Khanbhai

Cyber crime is another drain on the wealth of Australians costing the country $1.65 billion last year, latest research shows.

Internet crooks, according to the Norton Cyber Crime Report, have targeted a quarter of all Australians.

Per person, Australians lost an average of $306 each, 60% higher than the $197 global average, the survey of 13,000 adults across 24 countries found.

According to Norton’s research, 37% of Australian social networkers have been victims of crime over the past year, with more than one in ten reporting that someone had hacked into their profile.

In total, 15% of adults asked said they have been a victim of social or mobile cyber crime.

Norton’s Vice President of Asia Pacific, David Freer, said that part of the growth in mobile-related cyber crime was due to the growing awareness of laptop and desktop computer users of the kind of threats they face.

“Particularly on mobile devices, people are nowhere near as aware that an app can steal money from you,” he said.

“The number of threats is coming from a low base, but we’re seeing a lot more success come from those.”

One in five Australian mobile users has received a text message from someone they don't know requesting that they click on a link or dial an unknown number to retrieve a ''voicemail'' and one third of social network users have been targeted by a cyber criminal.

Yet 51% of social network users and 81% of mobile phone users had no security settings.

Most people had no idea what a virus or cyber attack would look like.

''Malware and viruses used to wreak obvious havoc on your computer,'' a safety advocate for Norton, Marian Merritt, said.

''You'd get a blue screen, or your computer would crash, alerting you to an infection. But cyber criminals' methods have evolved. They want to avoid detection as long as possible … Nearly half of internet users believe that unless their computer crashes or malfunctions, they're not 100% sure they've fallen victim to such an attack.''

Common forms of new cyber crime are people hacking into social networking profiles, infecting a computer with a virus sent through a dodgy link shared on a social networking profile, or sending a text message to a mobile phone with a dangerous link or voicemail message.