From quite a while I haven’t see any tactics being developed and deployed by scammers and I believe the reason is, because they are doing good with their old tricks and lots of people still don’t understand they being scammed. This inspired me to make a small list of few scams going on specifically in Australian Market.
Many people ask me what does scammer get by doing these scams.
- Steal personal information for Identity theft. From simple mobile phone contract to terrorist threats, a lot of damage can be done with stolen identities.
- Steal financial information for later use. In most cases scammer, don’t use your financial information straight away they keep it for bulk sale to big fish.
- Spread viruses, they act like business development channel for Antivirus firms, because if you don’t catch a virus why would you buy an antivirus?
Latest scams currently active in market.
1: Google Docs scam.
- How it works?
You will receive a very genuine looking fake email with shared google doc link in it, appearing to be sent by a known person, possibly by a friend or credible contact.
- What scammer want from you?
Scammer wants you to click on link and try to view the document, once clicked the document will ask you to login so you can view it.
- What happens?
Once you click on link the damage is done, the idea is to steal your login details but even you don’t put your login details they have probably installed a key logger which will record your keystrokes later and send them secretly.
2: Free or Dirt cheap holidays.
- How it works?
You receive a mail, email or telephone call, in which you are offered either free or dirt cheap holiday package overseas.
- What scammer wants from you?
Scammer want you to be extremely interested in holiday, so they can offer you very cheap upgrades like from economy to business flight upgrade or 3 star to 5 start hotel upgrade for $100.
- What happens?
Since everything appear genuine, all they need is you credit card details to scam you bigtime. In very rare cases victims has received the travel packages but their cards get charged on regular prices and now there will be big cancellation charges.
3: Taxation office or Secret services contacting you and offering real money.
- How it works
You will receive a call from not so convincing scammer who will not actually scam you yet and hang up with the arrangements to call you back again. Soon after scammer’s call, you will receive another call from secret service or taxation office who will reveal that the last call you receive was from a very notorious scammer and the government agencies are after him from long time and now they need your help to track that person.
- What scammer wants from you?
To be precise, scammer want you to help the agencies finding them and accept the plan agency is offering to chase and capture the scammer. The plan will be, agency will offer you the money upfront In your bank account and ask you to withdraw the money from your account send it to scammer via services like western union etc. so they can arrest the scammer when he or she come to receive the money. amount can be as big as $20,000 and you will in fact receive the real money.
- What happens
Fake Agency people will already have your all your details handy to build trust with you and they will transfer money to your account, for you to send it to scammer. So you might be thinking where is the scam??? Well the money is actually, not coming from them, it’s coming from your own credit card as balance transfer to your bank account. Why do they do this? Because they can’t charge your credit card for $20k straight but they transfer in your own account and bank won’t stop it because it’s your own account. And you been con to send them money via money transfer agencies overseas, where it can’t be tracked.
Additional: In some cases, the money also come from someone else’s hacked bank account because they need a recipient to mislead the tracking of money.
How to be prevent this from happening to you?
In Google doc scenario: if you receive an email with shared google doc link, don’t click on the link, instead call the sender or send a new email to verify if they have shared something with you. If not simply mark the email as phishing scam so email authorities can evaluate the threat and stop it in future. But in a scenario where you have click on the link or more, stop using that computer and change the email password from some other device. To fix the machine hire a computer repair service and if you are in Melbourne, feel free to contact www.Melbournegeeks.com.au / 0477 464 336 and our staff will be glad to help you with the issue.
For free and cheap holiday scam: I would highly recommend to do some due diligence before paying, like contacting the hotel directly but don’t use the number provided by scammer instead find the number yourself or via credible source and check holiday provider review online to be on safe side.
Taxation and secret service scam: Its easy, take the matter to your local police station to verify the authenticity of caller.