Australian pensioner, Maureen Deans, is yet another victim of phishing. The scam started when her daughter clicked on a link in a text message claiming that someone close to her had gotten Coronavirus. Weeks later she received a phone call from someone who told her that she had been scammed and that they would help her set up a new account to transfer her money into. Little did she know, the person calling was the scammer.
Before Maureen and her daughter knew what was going on, the scammers had stolen $25,000 from Maureen’s bank account – money she had saved for a family cruise. This story isn’t unusual however, as Australians continue to be inundated with scams such as the Hey Mum scam which fleeced Australian parents of over $2 million in just a few months. Staggeringly, ACCC’s latest Targeting Scams report reveals that scams cost Australians over $2 billion last year.
A Current Affair reported the story, bringing in Martin Boyd from A Current Affair reported the story, bringing in Martin Boyd from Vertex Cyber Security to give expert advice. Martin said that these days we unfortunately have to assume that everything is suspicious. He suggested that people always double check financial transactions and have a support network or people to check in with, to verify things. He also suggested people use a password manager to generate and store random passwords, and to use multi-factor authentication.
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