One in 10 Internet users have fallen victim to online fraud in the past year, losing an average of nearly $2000 each.

Get Safe Online, a British Government-backed Internet safety group, said almost 3.5 million British people in total had been victims of fraud, many of them experienced web users.

In total, 6 percent of people had suffered fraud while shopping online, 4 percent experienced general fraud and 3 percent had money stolen from their bank accounts or credit cards.

But despite the high incidence of fraud the organisation warned that many people were still failing to take basic steps to protect themselves when using the Internet, and less than half of people felt they were wholly responsible for their own safety when online.

One in six of the 2,441 people surveyed felt responsibility rested with their banks.

According to the survey, carried out by polling group YouGov, just 9 percent of people take steps to protect website passwords.

Tony Neate, managing director of Get Safe Online, said: "The internet is a fantastic resource and its use is growing daily. Unfortunately, it is now being used by criminals who are out to defraud us.

"The internet now is the real world. We don't blame the police when we get burgled and we must take responsibility for what we do online in the same way we do for securing our houses and cars.

"If we take greater care to protect ourselves online, we can reduce the majority of these criminal activities. Our message is that each of us has to take greater responsibility for our own online security."

With 93 percent of web users now going online daily, it is no longer good enough to assume technology will work for itself, added Neate.

"A computer is not like a washing machine where you can just press a button and use it until it breaks down," he said. "It is more like a car and needs some time and effort to maintain it."

Get Safe Online said simple measures such as installing a firewall on your computer can help prevent fraud, but claimed Internet users should also look out e-mails from organisations they didn't recognise offering 'too good to be true' deals.

They also repeated recent warnings over 'phising' scams, where fraudsters send out e-mail messages that look as if they come from a bank and which seek to trick people into handing over confidential details.

Nearly a quarter of the survey's respondents said most of their online security passwords were the same.

A fifth of those polled said they had replied to spam messages and 10 percent had clicked on an Internet link within a spam email.

Garreth Griffith, head of trust and safety at online auction site eBay, said: "You wouldn't give a stranger the key to your house, but this is the situation many people unknowingly find themselves in with more sophisticated forms of online fraud."

Source: China Daily/agencies