Millennials are not too worried about being victims of financial fraud, but they are most likely to say they had been victimized in the past two years, according to research by LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute.

The study, dubbed Financial Fraud & Retirement Accounts – An Opportunity to Engage, Educate, and Build Trust, found that 17 percent of millennials said they had been duped financially as compared to 11 percent of Generation X and 12 percent of Baby Boomers. The research focused on 1,005 American consumers age 18 and older.

Because millennials tend to have lower balances than their older counterparts, they might not believe they will be targeted, noted LIMRA’s researcher Ryan Scanlon in a news release. Another reason he pointed to is that younger consumers are more likely to engage in risky behaviors, such as revealing too much online that could make them an easy target.

Scanlon said the research is a result of LIMRA’s initiative to tackle fraud prevention. “Our research, industry monitoring and networking events continually reinforced our perception of fraud as a critical area of focus for the industry. In support of that broader effort, our research program includes several initiatives, like this one, to better understand the challenge through the lens of different constituencies,’’ he said.

He added that because fraud prevention is a fairly large topic, LIMRA has initially chosen to zero in specifically on fraudulent account takeover activities.

The research also found that millennials were the least likely age group to check their retirement accounts, at least once a quarter, for fraud. According to the release, less than half of millennials looked at their account compared to 59 percent Gen Xers and more than 7 in 10 Baby Boomers.

In addition, the study noted that millennials are the ones who would welcome financial service companies to reach out to them and inform them more about their habits and what they can do to prevent fraud. And one in three wished they knew more, LIMRA found.

LIMRA offers these three tips to prevent financial fraud:

• Protect your personal information at all times. Learn to recognize when your web activity is encrypted and only share sensitive payment or login info over these secure connections.
• Don’t use the same password or username. Hackers will often breach accounts with low levels of security and then simply test if the same credentials can gain access to more important accounts. Neither your username nor your password should be recycled from anything you have made public, like your actual name, email address, or social media profiles.
• Routinely monitor all of your accounts. Write down a reminder or make an appointment on your calendar to help you remember. If you still have assets in your retirement accounts from previous employers and struggle to monitor them regularly, consider whether consolidating your accounts is a viable option.