That's about one every 10 minutes. It could just be the tip of the iceberg given experts believe many crimes go unreported, either because the victims are too embarrassed, often the case in romantic scams, or aren't even aware what has occurred.

The annual cost of cybercrime to Australian business has been estimated at just under $30 billion or about five per cent of this year's Federal budget spending.

Losses average out at about $700 per victim although individual losses above $50,000 are far from rare.

Today we revealed that a south-west IT expert estimated "50 or 60" businesses had been attacked in the past three years. The attack on South West Healthcare which has crippled internet access for hospitals across the south-west for the past two weeks is still having an impact.

Attacks like this are hard to predict but the majority of assaults are much simpler - these are the online assaults and real time frauds committed against individuals hundreds of times a day. One of the most common of these is "phishing", the sending of links to malicious websites in emails shotgunned to tens of thousands of users. In some cases the scam can be as simple as pretending to be a bank, a government agency or even the tax office and asking for account log in details.

The most surprising statistic to emerge from the ACSC's most recent report, released as part of "Stay Smart Online Week", is the age range most affected.

According to the ACSC survey on which the report was based, two-thirds of victims were aged between 25 and 34. Of these about 94 per cent were male. One of life's great mysteries has to be why so many 25 to 34-year-olds, who you would expect to be the most computer-literate generation ever, fall for this type of thing. These are, after all, the people who grew up with the world wide web. While there are no magic bullets to make this problem go away, the individual remains the first and last line of defence.