Scammers are getting sneakier: survey
AUCKLAND: Scammers are becoming increasingly sophisticated, nearly half of all Westpac Bank customers saying they are finding scams harder to identify.
The bank’s survey of 1300 customers suggests scams are ubiquitous, with 87% of respondents saying they had received a suspicious email, text or phone call in the past six months, and 49% saying it was harder to tell if those messages were fraudulent.
Westpac New Zealand head of financial crime Mark Coxhead said the findings were not all that surprising.
‘‘It was perhaps a little higher than what I had been expecting, but anecdotally this was backing up what we were hearing from our customers and even what you are just hearing in a social environment.’’
Mr Coxhead declined to reveal the total financial loss the bank’s customers had suffered in the past year to scams but said the number had doubled.
The techniques scammers were employing were becoming more advanced, he said, challenging the notion that it was just older people who were vulnerable to scams.
‘‘Traditionally, it used to be the email from the Nigerian prince or a lawyer in another country [saying] that you’ve got a deceased relative wanting your details.’’
However, impersonation scams, in which a person pretended to be a bank, a credit card company or a government department, were on the rise, he said.
Scammers were also making use of personal information they had gleaned online to make themselves appear more legitimate, Mr Coxhead said.
They would call from a phone number that appeared legitimate, making it hard for customers to know who they were talking to.
The bank released a phone recording of a fraudster pretending to be from the ‘‘Westpac fraud team’’ when speaking to one of its customers.
The scammer already had the customer’s name, phone number and credit card details.
They tried to build trust and elicit further information by telling the customer their card was being used for suspicious transactions in Mexico.
The scammer then sent the customer a text message with a code which they claimed was to authorise the card’s cancellation, when in fact it was a verification code for an online purchase.
Unwittingly, the customer provided the code to the scammer over the phone.
‘‘Fortunately, in this case another fraud detection system blocked the transaction, so the scam was unsuccessful,’’ Mr Coxhead said.
There were red flags people should look out for, such as unsolicited phone calls, a sense of urgency from the caller and unusual payment methods, he said.
‘‘Be vigilant — if it feels too good to be true, it probably is.
‘‘Never give anyone your pin or codes and if they have come through on the phone just hang up.’’ — RNZ