Top 3 Australian financial scams of 2014
- 22 December, 2014 08:00
As the year winds down, it’s time to look back at some of the financial scams that targeted Australians in 2014.
These ranged from phishing emails which claimed to be from government departments to phone calls telling people they had won a travel prize. While none of the scams are particularly new, criminals took advantage of people who were worried that they owed money or who were simply looking for a cheap holiday.
You’ve got spam
Email scams were once again one of the most widely used methods of targeting Australians with several companies finding their names and logos used by scammers.
In August 2014, Australia Post warned customers not to open a scam email that claimed a courier could not deliver a parcel to their address.
According to the postal service, the email, which included Australia Post's logo, asked the customer to view/print information about their parcel and to go to their local post office to collect it.
“Australia Post does not request customers to send payment for parcel collection nor do we charge customers for holding a parcel,” said an Australia Post spokesperson at the time. “If you receive this email, please delete it.”
Some criminals took the extra step of targeting Australians living in a specific state.
In November 2014, New South Wales residents complained that they were receiving emails claiming to be from the NSW Office of State Revenue (OSR) or State Debt Recovery Office (SDRO) which demanded payment for speeding or other traffic infringements.
However, neither the OSR nor SDRO issue fines and penalty notices via email.
According to OSR Commissioner of Fines Administration, Tony Newbury, an analysis of the emails suggested that the scammers are based in Denmark and Russia.
"This is a very sophisticated attack and while the scam emails and prompts may look genuine, they are 100 per cent fake and I urge people not to pay these fraudulent fines,” he said at the time.
Utility companies were also targeted by scammers looking to make money out of unsuspecting customers.
In June 2014, utility provider EnergyAustralia warned customers about an email phishing scam that claimed to contain a link to their electricity or gas bill.
The email, which was addressed to `Dear Valued Customer’, asked the customer to click on a link to view their bill. The link took people to a website address that was not operated by EnergyAustralia where they were at risk of having their PR infected with malware.
The omnipresent scams ostensibly sent from outside of Australia, particularly from Africa, continued with scammers claiming they had access to millions of United States dollars and that they would share it with recipients, for a fee of course.
In December 2014, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) sent out 1500 letters to people in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory in an attempt to stop them sending more money to scammers overseas.
The project, which began in August 2014, uses financial intelligence to identify Australians sending funds to West African nations. The ACCC letters tell people that they may have been targeted by a scam.
Approximately 60 per cent of people who received the warning letters stopped sending money overseas for at least a 6 week period, said ACCC deputy chair Delia Rickard.
“While there is no guarantee that all of the people sent a letter will be a scam victim, there are very real questions about why people should be sending funds to these high risk jurisdictions [in West Africa]. Funds transfers from the people we wrote to total over $9 million,” she said in a statement.
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Don’t answer that phone
If the email scams weren’t bad enough, scammers were also phoning up people or sending SMS messages.
In April 2014, Qantas warned customers to hang up on an automated call scam which claimed they had won a travel prize or credit points worth $999 towards their next holiday.
To claim the prize, the customer was asked to press 1 on their phone. They are then put through to a scammer who will ask if the traveller is over 30 years of age and if they have a valid credit card. The scammer then asks for their credit card details so that the prize can be processed.
However, at the time, a Qantas spokesperson warned that if people hand over their credit card details, money would be siphoned out of their bank account.
Despite efforts by the airline to shut down the scam, it was still operating in August 2014.
Qantas was not the only company having trouble with phone scams.
The cold calling Windows Event Viewer or `eventvwr’ scam, which was investigated by Computerworld Australia in 2009, continues to plague Australians.
The scam involves overseas telemarketers -who claim to be associated with Microsoft- calling up unsuspecting users in Australia from an offshore call centre. The scammer claims that the user’s computer has a virus and that they can remove it for a small fee.
The user is than asked for their details so that the scammer can gain remote access to the victim’s PC.
Once the cold caller has gained access they ask the victim to test the new system by using the Internet and typing in data such as their bank account details.
In August 2014, an Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) spokesman said the number of complaints to the Do Not Call Register operator relating to PC Virus/Microsoft impostor calls had "been steady for several months."
ACMA also warned that there is a new twist on the scam which means some cold callers claim to be associated with Telstra, Bigpond or other Australian companies rather than Microsoft.
Bank customers were a target for SMS scams. In September 2014, National Australia Bank (NAB) was warning customers to delete an SMS message that claimed unusual activity has been detected on their bank account.
The SMS re-directed customers to click a link that sent them to a fake NAB website where they were then asked to enter their credit card and personal details.
Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick
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