People lose a lot of money to phone scams — sometimes their life savings. Scammers have figured out countless ways to cheat you out of your money over the phone. In some scams, they act friendly and helpful. In others, they threaten or try to scare you. They’ll do what it takes to get your money or your personal information to commit identity theft. Don’t give it to them. Here’s what you need to know.
It’s probably a scam if:
- A call or text sounds too good to be true.
- These callers may offer to lower your power, gas, phone or internet rates. They generally have an Australian number but are based outside of Australia. These callers will collect your personal information and use it as part of an identity theft action or on sell it to other groups to continue the scamming process.
- Someone you don’t know has your personal details.
- Some scammers will harvest your information from social media. Using this information they can call you and convince you they are a genuine caller and obtain more information about you including bank account details or credit card information.
- A message contains links or attachments.
- A text from an unknown source that asks you to go to a website and contains a link to that website that looks like the genuine article, but instead is a fake one. It will ask you to enter your username and password which is the stored by the scammers for future use.
- You feel pressured to act quickly.
- A threat of a service being cut off, getting sued in court, arrested for not paying a tax bill, but it all can be settled if you pay using gift vouchers such as from Apple or Google. The best action for these is to hang up on them.
- Another urgency scam is the Amazon prime renewal. A robotic automated voice tells you your Amazon Prime member ship has been renewed for $99. If you want to cancel press 1. You are put through to an offshore call centre who ask you to verify your details and the card you used to pay the account. Even if you don’t have an account, you will be asked to provide your credit card details to confirm you don’t have an account. This then gives the scammers enough information to use your credit card and on sell your personal information.
- Someone requests money in an unusual or specific way.
- This can be by asking you make a payment using Apple or Google vouchers even if you are required to pay a tax or overdue services bill. No organisation regardless of who they claim to to be will ask for payment using a voucher.
The best way to determine if they are a scam caller is anyone calling you out of the blue that makes a threat, an offer of saving you money, or claims to know about you.
The best action is just to hang up. Never talk to them as anything you say could be information they can use.
