Protect Yourself From Scammers – Forbes Advisor Australia

There has been a surge in scam reports mentioning coronavirus. Scammers are hoping you have let your guard down and are often phishing for personal information, banking or superannuation details.

Scammers may also pretend to have a connection to you, so it’s important that you check that a recent text message that sounds odd has actually been sent by who they say it is.

The Optus hack exposed customers’ names; date of birth; phone number; email addresses; residential address; and identity documents, such as driver’s license, Medicare numbers and passport details.

The hack was so substantial that the government stepped in to minimise the impact for customers, opening an investigation to understand how the breach occurred.

A few weeks later came the Medibank Private breach, whereby hackers accessed the names and addresses, date of birth, Medicare numbers, policy numbers, phone numbers and some claims data.

Scamwatch warns that other common scams include scam text messages about missed calls, voicemails, deliveries and photo uploads. The message asks the receiver to tap on a link to download or access something, which will download malware to your device. The government organisation has been encouraging people to learn ways to identify scams and take the time to check whether an offer or contact is genuine before acting on it.

As scammers develop new ways to catch people out, increasing our vigilance in this way can alert us to the fact that something is a scam.