Are you worried about the prevalence of scams

Tell that to seniors, they're still living in yesteryear.

The number of times I've told my mum to never give out any personal information over the phone.

I had an agent from the ATO department ring me concerning a family member. I asked for a name or an ID so I could call back and I would answer anything they wanted to know, but they denied.

I then proceeded to give them a bit of spray over the phone with some naughty words thinking they were a scammer. They did have some personal information about this person and it got the better of me so I called the ATO, and queried the contact, and yes it was them.

 

Given I am in my eighth decade on this earth, I'm done for.

 

I've been getting emails supposedly from Hubby lately. They have his email address, but of course, it's not from him. Very annoying.

 

Me too! It was so much simpler with paper tape and punched cards on the computer. Some old people (over 30?) know and accept computers, scams and related topics. Others are like Sergeant Shultz, "I know nothing." Awareness is probably less a function of age than disposition and aptitude.

I use computers a lot and have about seven here, including three backups. I'm wary of scams and take steps to miminise being ripped off. This includes but is not limited to having the bank account with a high balance not online. If I want to take out funds I have to go to a branch. Another account at another bank was set up with cash and is used for online payments. If the account is hacked then there is no connection to an account with a large balance. Spending 20 minutes a month moving cash on foot is my way of avoiding scams.

I also use a virtual machine for sensitive matters. I get 3-5 scam email a year, with most picked up at the server.

 

I haven't seen the inside of a bank in over 10 years.

And I don't feel like walking from Canberra to Sydney to move funds around. It will shortly be pointless anyway as one of the banks I use is ceasing issuing or receiving either cash or cheques plus will close its telephone banking service. Online transactions only.

 

I've done exactly the same - a few years back - used some rather unladylike words

 

The main thing with online accounts is to never use any of the auto fill services for the account log-ins, but now the govt is going to that digital ID which is very dangerous for fraud activity. Someone could easily access your digital ID and may pose as yourself and make or access documents that could lead to getting into a bank account.

 

Number of reported breaches. It doesn't report the number of attempts which would be in the 1,000s per day.

Notifiable Data Breaches Report: July to December 2023

 

• In short: Australians made more than 600,000 scam reports last year, losing $2.7 billion overall.
• Older people suffered the greatest losses and there was a notable increase in scams originating on social media, the ACCC's new report says.
• What's next? The government wants to introduce mandatory scam codes for banks, telcos and digital platforms.

Scammers are becoming more sophisticated – and Australians with retirement savings are a big target

 

Gold Coast crypto-miner assets seized amid fears $60m would vanish

The corporate watchdog raided a Gold Coast-based cryptocurrency miner, which allegedly encouraged investors to put their super into crypto products without a financial licence, amid fears $62 million put in by savers would disappear.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission obtained Federal Court orders this month to have insolvency and advisory firm McGrathNicol appointed receivers of NGS Crypto’s digital assets, which the corporate regulator alleged was the best way to protect assets that are “at risk of dissipation”.

 

Follow-up advice from the financial institution is it has credited the transactions on a provisional basis while it completes the necessary investigations. If it is shown I authorised the transactions (which I didn't) they may reverse the transactions.

Note to self: Until the matter is resolved, don't spend those funds.

 

One of my builders accounts person's email got hacked and they sent emails to everyone that had current invoices saying that they had changed bank accounts and to pay invoice to Bank X instead of Bank Y.

Red flag as I know this is one of the forms of scams. Was from legitimate email address of their accounts person, had a cc of someone else in the company but slightly dodgier email. So if I had replied back they could have replied via either address to let me know all was ok and they had changed email address.

Anyone that changes bank accounts gets a phone call from me and so I rang the owner and told them I was concerned they had been hacked due to change of bank details etc and I was right they hadn't changed anything and they investigated and found they had indeed been hacked.

As much as I hate making phone calls it's always best to confirm via a known source (ie not any information from the invoice/email)

 

True. One needs to be constantly aware of scams, monitoring, profiling, AI and the like.

 

Thats the important bit, use a phone number from another source to call the business and confirm details. I dont like the phone much but I would hate to be scammed even more so I always make the call to confirm bank details on the occasional invoice I receive.

 

That's good numbers 450 investors ÷ into 62 million ..
There is always been a saying that IF it works on the Gold Coast from tea bags to time-share and over 30%% instant returns from various Fast Bucks schemes.
That IF it works on the gold coast it works anywhere in the world..

 

Much of the discussion around this is centred around the first phone call from the people that promise everything..
I still have about 3-5 calls a week from different people and my only rule is if there is a 2-3 second delay on the person on the other end of the call just hang up immediately..
I do pity the people on the wrong side of 65 that still have trust in the systems that these individuals use.