(Yicai Global) April 3 -- The percentage of cyber fraud victims who actually lost money last year more than halved against the total number of marks, according to data from bank card giant China UnionPay and a host of financial institutions.

About 51 percent of consumers were hit by online fraud last year, UnionPay said in a report compiled from 62,000 questionnaire responses, adding that 23 percent of these suffered a loss, compared with 49 percent in 2018. 17 banks and 18 payment firms joined the survey, to which 70 percent of respondents were aged 25 to 45. It covered 31 provincial-level regions, including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

Consumers were more alert last year and there were more available avenues for reclaiming losses, the report added. Informing the bank or police was the primary method for resolving issues, alongside insurance claims, though a quarter of women and 20 percent of men did not take any action. Homemakers and retirees were among the least likely to seek resolution.

The same proportion of consumers surveyed engaged in bad habits that helped the scammers. The three most common blunders were not unbinding bank cards or deleting sensitive information when changing phone numbers (24 percent), deleting payment apps without unlinking bank cards (23 percent) and consumers scanning every promotional QR code they see (20 percent), the figures show.

Those engaging in these and other bad habits, such as sharing verification codes or bank card and personal information with illegal financial platforms, lost 2.7 times more than others who were defrauded, on average. Online gamblers were the most vulnerable.

Editor: James Boynton