Latest scams net big bucks

SOPHISTICATED scammers are duping innocent Australians out of huge sums of money by encouraging them to click on links or hand over personal information online.

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission deputy chair Delia Rickard said business email scams were increasing, and scammers were having a lot of success.

She warned people not to share bank account numbers online and said banking login details should never be shared.

“We’ve seen everything from schools to government institutions to small businesses ripped off this way,” Ms Rickard said. “Never, ever click on an attachment in an email that you are not 100 per cent sure about.”

It comes after recent cases including:

man who was convinced he was conversing with his daughter about a transaction of more than $140,000. She said the bank details he needed to move the money to had changed. This was not the case – a scammer had intercepted their emails and pretended to be his daughter. The cash was transferred to the scammer; and

man replied to a text message that looked like it was from the Commonwealth Bank. It asked for his licence details, which he

gave, and he was scammed tens of thousands of dollars.

Both men are working to have their money recovered.

In both cases, the men said they had no idea they were being duped by scammers.

“I don’t think I’ll answer an email from my banking institution and I certainly won’t be answering any text messages,” the 51-year-old said.

Westpac’s head of digital security, Josh Nast, urged people to limit the amount of information they shared online and to add layers of authentication to accounts.