Your life, your job, your career – How a simple scam can ruin all of them

Your life, your job, your career – How a simple scam can ruin all of them

It’s that time of year again, the silly season! The festive time of year where our social obligations are at an all-time high while we enjoy time with our families, accompanied by great food and drink.

Unfortunately, it’s not all tinsel and trees. It appears that Christmas is the time of year where most of our hard-earned Australian dollars are scammed from us.

In 2021, the ACCC reported a record high $323 million dollars in losses for Australian’s due to scammers. Given the current cyber security climate, that figure is expected to be higher again for the 2022 year.

What to look for

The leading scams that lurk around Christmas time are postage scams. I.e., Emails/text messages from “Australia POST”, “TOLL”, “DHL”, etc. claiming there is a parcel ready for collection. Secondly, gift card scams, i.e. “Congratulations, you have won a $500 bunnings voucher!” and lastly, Optus data breach scams, yes that’s right, scammers are capitalising on the Optus data breach by posing as an Optus representative to “assist” you with your leaked Optus data.

Most cyber scams come through as an email. Usually there is a link within the body of the email which will direct you to a website to harvest credit card information, or an attachment that you download that contains a virus to infect your computer. Once your computer is infected, your email accounts, bank accounts and all other activity on your computer can become compromised.

“That’s ok, I have anti-virus” some might say. While premium anti-virus is extremely important, especially on business systems, there’s no guarantee that your anti-virus software will protect you from the latest and more powerful viruses.

What can you do?

The number one thing anyone can do to protect themselves from cyber attacks is education. Being able to identify malicious and phishing emails is imperative to keeping you and your loved ones safe.

We highly recommend watching the below 3-minute video. Though short, this video is packed with vital information that could save you thousands of dollars.

Key takeaways from the video

• It is likely a scam if something of value is being offered for free.

• Social Engineering – the use of deception to manipulate people into divulging confidential or personal information that may be used for fraudulent or harmful purposes.

• Always check the senders email address.

• When in doubt, manually go to the website in question, don’t follow email links.

• Always check the URL at the top of the web browser, make sure it has the padlock icon.

• Only ever download software from reputable sources.

If you’re ever suspicious of an email, text message, phone call etc, please always feel free to reach out to our friendly Sunshine Coast and Brisbane based teams for all your cyber security questions and needs.