The ACCC has been running a scam disruption project for the past year - trying to stop potential victims from sending money to scammers, using financial intelligence to identify Australians sending funds to suspect countries and advising them that they may have been targeted by a scam.

It is also updating best practice guidelines for the dating and romance industry, which cover providing warnings to consumers, the complaint handling process, and working behind the scenes to identify scammers and keep them off the sites.

I was interviewed by Catherine Gregory of ABC News for provides an update to the scam disruption efforts where letters are sent to people sending money overseas to known high risk jurisdictions warning this might be a response to a scam.

They report some success as a proportion of people stop sending further money after receiving letters.

Victims can be highly traumatized by this and are often very embarrassed and ashamed when they learn they have become a victim of a scam and that the romance was a farce.

In some cases, online dating services are themselves engaged in misrepresentation, displaying profiles which have been fabricated, which use personal information from users who have not agreed to be depicted on the site social accounts, classified sites and even forums to groom new victims.

Ms Rickard said international money transfer firm Western Union has stopped a lot of payments and has trained staff to recognise scams.'We are in the process of talking to the banks, social media sites, telcos about what more they can do to either stop scammers conning victims in the first place or stop money going overseas,' she told AAP.That work is ongoing but I think we'll make some progress.' Ms Rickard said the ACCC was talking to Facebook about what more it could do to alert target profiles about the reality of romance scams and how they work.Older people are making many of the reports about social media site scams, according to consumer watchdog the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).Australians aged over 55 accounted for 45 per cent of around 200,000 reports to Scamwatch, with investment scams accounting for the most losses, followed by dating and romance scams.Romance scammers are increasingly using social media, mainly Facebook, to find victims instead of the traditional dating websites as a variety of scams continue to target Australians.The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is looking at what it can do beyond educating consumers about scams, its deputy chair Delia Rickard said.