Scammers, hackers - always double check bank details

I've been reading a lot about people sending money online to the wrong bank accounts because scammers/ hackers have hacked into a real estate agent's email and sent an email with different trust bank details to buyers.

Example news article:
'I'm the idiot that fell for it': How Kelly lost her $25,000 home deposit to scammers

Just a reminder to everyone to always call the real estate agency (or vendor or whatever party is involved) on their number (not the number on a potentially fake email) to verify bank account details. It doesn't hurt to double or triple check. I'm very paranoid when it comes to these things.

I've personally heard from my mum that her friend had lost almost $1m to a scammer who pretended to be the owner of a house but he wasn't, and took her money when she thought she had bought it.

Lots of scams around.

Anyone here with other cautionary tales or tips?

 

My daughter’s PayPal got hacked last month. PayPal had emailed her that some details had changed on her account. Hacker had changed it to a business name and business account. She logged into her account and could see heaps of changes being made, then hacker changed her password so she couldn’t access it. She phoned PayPal and got it all sorted.

 

Didn't use a solicitor?

 

Thanks for the reminder

Hackers are becoming more sophisticated day by day and we need to be vigilant more than ever. A lot of people (including myself) think this will never happen to them and let their guard down and become complacent.

 

Nope. Old school old people.

 

Bring back cash
Sure you will still get scammed in Bali, but who goes there now

 

Ironically we are dealing with cash here with all these bank transfers - the difference is that the cash is being transferred electronically, and not in briefcases stashed with notes.

 

Can you get scammed in a property settlement? What if the wrong bank details were input into the PEXA platform ? . What is the next best option other than email to notify your legal representative of your bank details when selling a property? these are the questions we are forced to ask in the world of scams and frauds .

 

On my last purchase I had a face to face meeting with the solicitor and had him give me the account number, but not the BSB, of the their trust account. When it was time to transfer funds they provided me with the account details and I could confirm the account number and do the transfer without a worry especially as it was $750k.

 

If we have customer’s making large transfer’s for settlements etc from an “email” from their solicitor we actually ask them to ring and confirm payment details via a call directly whilst in branch..

 

It’s always better to do through bank. Our last purchase was with cash but were able to get a small loan against a property.

 

Some banking apps are starting to look at account name on top of just bank account numbers. I think this could help out a bit

 

That is not correct. Not a single app limits to name. Bank accounts are numbers. The banking system has safeguards eg bpay and new payments platform etc. Osko etc

 

Commbank have a feature that checks the name that you enter against other transactions they've seen to that BSB/account. It does a search then says "this looks like others we have seen" before you submit the transfer. Its only looking up historical transfers as sanity check. I assume it will say "we haven't seen this BSB/account before" if no one has transfered to it from CBA before. It might help prevent scams from half-baked scammers, but I assume anyone intercepting emails will be fairly sophisticated.