This appeared last week:
Smishing: cyber scams reach a whole new level
Authored by Jane McCredie
Medicare: You have been in close contact with someone who has Omicron. Please follow the link below to order your PCR kit…
WHEN I received this text last week, there was a microsecond of anxiety.
“Oh no, here we go again” was my first thought, swiftly followed by the realisation that Medicare could not possibly know who I’d been in contact with and wouldn’t be sending me a link to order a PCR kit even if they did.
With around a million new cases of COVID-19 a month across Australia, contact tracing in the general community is no longer even a possibility. It just isn’t happening anymore.
I pasted the text into a search engine and, sure enough, it was the latest in a long line of scams inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As this government site explains, the recent spate of messages are impersonating government agencies to steal personal and banking details and, ultimately, money.
It’s not hard to see why even savvy people might fall for such scams. We’ve been living with constant anxiety about this disease for more than 2 years now, and we’re used to getting a lot of information about it from authorities, including by text.
And the scammers are clever. The links often look genuine at first glance, including “medicare” or another government agency in the URL, and leading to a convincing copy of an official website.
For the fraudsters, it’s a numbers game. Technologies such as SIM boxes allow them to send out upwards of a million messages a day.
It can be a lucrative business even if only one in a thousand people takes the bait.
One Victorian woman who did click on the link in her fake text message told 7 News last week she had narrowly escaped a financial scam.
After following the link, she entered her details and paid $1.49 to have a PCR test delivered.
Shortly afterwards, she received a phone call from a man with a British accent claiming to be from her bank. He informed her she had fallen for a scam and the fraudsters had attempted to take $1000 from her account.
When she questioned the caller’s identity, he told her googling his phone number would show it was a genuine Westpac number. It did.
Fortunately, she told him she was going to ring Westpac to confirm, at which point he hung up on her and she realised he was part of a double deception.
A global pandemic is fertile ground for an array of hoaxes, frauds and swindles of all kinds.
……
Jane McCredie is a Sydney-based health and science writer.
More here:
https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2022/24/smishing-cyber-scams-reach-a-whole-new-level/
These criminals are really being enabled by technologies that it has to be possible to really restrict to Government and legitimate businesses. No on should be able to send more than a few thousand texts otherwise! These SIM boxes need to be licensed with associated heavy regulation!
Worryingly the regulators have just announced (July 4, 2022) for the last financial year people lost over $2 Billion so whatever they are actually doing now is not working!
Public education on what is going on is just vital!! Sadly it is the not well off and strugglers who are losing a majority of these funds.
Any other ideas to nobble the jerks?
David.
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