3.1 billion dollars. That sort of money could buy you several exotic fish, or the town of Greg
Greg in New South Wales, probably. If you're the entire population of Australia though,
you could lose all that cash to scammers, which is exactly what's happened over the past year. It's a
scary amount of money to just wave goodbye to, and it's around 1.1 billion dollars more than 2021.
But the reality is that scams are getting more crafty, harder to spot and more common,
which is catching a lot of people out including young people.
We are seeing more scams in general, and we're also seeing more scams being reported
by young people in 2021. 18 percent of scams that were being reported to
our Scamwatch service were from people under 18. Fast forward to now, that's 27 percent.
I've gotten lots of um like text message scams, calls.
Really annoying, but the text message scams crazy
and they're getting more like elaborate every single time
Facebook scammers, TikTok has scams all like these platforms of social media that us teenagers go on.
You'll get a message saying you've been involved in this or click this link
because you've been mentioned in something and I think a lot of people falling for that one.
There's also this Instagram one going around, it'll be a new account. It'll say, ‘Yeah,
I got hacked on my old account, it's a new account’. The scam was they wanted me to enter my email and
my login for them to access their account. And I said, ‘That's a bit that's a bit devious isn't it?’
The most common and, and frankly, most damaging scam that we're seeing is in relation to photos
being exchanged. So, via a relationship scam, and we're seeing those scams arise
across a range of platforms even through the chat function in some online games.
Online shopping is a massive one.
You'll see a lot of people just selling fake stuff and there's no real way to verify it.
The ones that say part time jobs like this much money on messages,
I think that's pretty convincing to some people.
I think the younger populations are also more susceptible because I have two younger brothers
and they love the game Fortnite. They were asking me to pay for something and he was like it's,
it’s free V-Bucks if you just put your account details in. Luckily,
I was there. If I wasn't there, it could have been a different story.
According to the ACC and Scamwatch, in 2022 Aussie kids up to 18 years old lost $361,976 to scams.
And already in 2023, we've had losses reported of $337,000. So almost the same amount.
But all of these numbers are only the stats from reported cases. So,
the figures could actually be much higher.
On some games I've been scammed and through messages I've been scammed.
Tapping a link hacks your phone, viruses, all of this.
One of my friends did get money taken out of her bank account by clicking one of the links, yeah.
I ordered some items for delivery by Australia Post and I get a link that says ‘yeah, yeah,
track your delivery here’. I'm about to click it and I'm like, ‘Ah, wait a minute. Why is
this from a random phone number?’ So, so, I caught myself for the last moment.
I think nearly because on Instagram, there's like a bunch of like accounts
that like follow you and then like try to get you to click a link. But even if you don't,
sometimes they still hack you. So, I think I've almost fallen victim
to it. But I always like change my password so it’s been alright.
Scammers aren't always just after your money, sometimes thereafter your information. What
that can enable them to do is pretend to be you and then they might go and make
applications for credit in your name. They might commit fraud in your name.
Personally, I don't find many scams from those things. They all like have a look to them.
Links that have been shortened using different, like Bitly,
etc. I think that’s an immediate red scare, red flag.
Giving free things out like you'll get a free car if you log into this, immediate red flag yep.
Anything that says you've been randomly selected as
a winner. Some things are too good to be true.
We've seen a couple of new scams emerged recently around popular major events. So
just in the last few days, we've seen scams emerge selling fake tickets to, to Matildas
games even fake streaming services because that's exactly what scammers do. They tap into what's
going on at the moment, what people might be worried about, and they seek to exploit it.
People think they're too like smart or like, do you know what I mean? It wouldn't happen to me,
but you know, it just makes the one slip up and then there you go. You've been a victim.
So, we ask people to remember three key words: stop, think and protect. Stop before you give
the personal information and then think, do I really know who I'm dealing with and finally,
protect. If something does feel wrong, report the matter to your financial
institution as soon as possible and report the matter to Scamwatch.
If you get one of those messages, just report them so they don't come again.
Don't click on links ever. And yeah, just don't do what
people tell you to do if you’re getting like messages and stuff, that’d be it.
Bank account details like security numbers,
addresses, anything, anything that asks for that, you kind of know straight away.
If it is convincing, don't be scared to run it by your mates or your friends or
your parents at the end of the day. If it, if it evades you,
it's unlikely to evade multiple people's opinions as well.