FOUR OUT OF five people in Ireland believe that scams have become more sophisticated in the past year and are increasingly difficult to identify, according to a new survey.

Polling carried out by Censuswide also found that nearly half (46%) of Irish people believe scam that awareness should be taught in schools, while 98% think that children should be taught some form of scam awareness from a young age.

The survey of 2,000 Irish adults was carried out in January 2025 on behalf of the money app Wise.

It found that the majority of Irish people (77%) believed that scam attempts increased significantly last year, with 82% saying they had become more sophisticated during that time.

Men reported almost double the amount of average losses (€2,168.73) to scammers than women (€1,151.22), and also said they were less likely than women to admit to family members that they have been scammed.

James Clements, Wise’s scams and financial fraud expert, said that polling also showed that people could do more to prevent themselves from being defrauded.

He noted that only a quarter of people have set up fraud alerts with their financial provider or credit card company, while just one in ten people have registered with identity theft monitoring services.

Last month, Gardaí warned the public to be vigilant about “very high” levels of text message scams.

They warned that fraudulent text messages were beginning to appear within a previous genuine thread of texts from certain companies and institutions, often urging customers to call phone numbers that are not genuine.

They also reminded the public to remain wary of texts from unknown senders, and unusual requests that appear in threads of previous genuine texts.

People have been reminded to never ever click on links in a text and never ring a number contained in a text, or to give away personal data, such as bank details, PINs, passwords, one time codes, PPS number or Eircode, or transfer money.

Anyone who has been a victim of fraud is advised to change their passwords and PIN codes, report it to their bank as soon as possible and ask the bank to do a recall.

Gardaí have also urged the public to report any suspected incidents of fraud directly to them.

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