Category Archives: Scams

Australian losses to online marketplace fraud increase as scams become increasingly sophisticated

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Consumer groups say online platforms like Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree need to do more to keep customers safe

Wayne Draper and his wife wanted a puppy. When they came across pictures of a new bulldog on Facebook, they instantly fell in love.

The Facebook page it was advertised on had been operating since January 2021, and had seemed to cycle for several litters of puppies. They promised their pups were ANKC (Australian National Kennel Council)-registered, wormed and had a full veterinary health check.

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Scams: FCA blocks more than 10,000 ads from Instagram, Facebook and YouTube

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Financial watchdog warns over rise of ‘fin-fluencers’ targeting younger people on social media

More than 10,000 misleading financial promotions and scams aimed at consumers via social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok have been identified and targeted by the financial watchdog during the past year.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said the use of social media marketing channels and the rise of so-called “fin-fluencers” – particularly directing investment products at younger age groups – exploded last year, resulting in a record number of takedown notices and alerts.

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Australian banks should reimburse scam victims, ACCC and consumer advocates say

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‘Glaring lack of regulations’ means Australia is a ‘wild, wild west’, Consumer Action Law Centre policy officer says

In October 2021, Victorian education consultant Anne lost almost $100,000 within 48 hours after scammers hacked her email, posed as her, and directed her clients to pay invoices into a different account.

“[My client] rang me and said ‘did you get the money’, I said ‘no’. But the bank said it was too late, it was gone,” said Anne, who is using a pseudonym for privacy reasons.

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Influencer ‘Ray Hushpuppi’ jailed over plan to launder $300m

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Ramon Abbas, described by FBI as one of world’s most prolific money launderers, sentenced to 11 years

A social media influencer who called himself Ray Hushpuppi and flaunted a lavish lifestyle fuelled by his efforts to launder millions of stolen dollars has been sentenced in Los Angeles to more than 11 years in federal prison.

Ramon Abbas, 40, also was ordered by a federal judge to pay $1.7m in restitution to two fraud victims, according to a statement from the US Department of Justice.

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Online fraudsters adapt tactics to exploit UK cost of living crisis

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Phishing attacks have started to target people in difficult financial situations, ONS reports

Fraudsters have adapted their tactics to exploit the rising cost of living, officials have said.

A report from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said anti-fraud squads had identified new trends as phishing attacks – when perpetrators attempt to trick users into clicking a bad link – have started to target those in difficult financial situations.

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Number of scam calls to Australian phones cut by half while text message crypto scams soar

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Communications industry peak body and watchdog sees telcos block more than 549m scam calls since inception of code

Phone scam calls have halved since this time last year, data from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Scamwatch shows, but other investment frauds – including on social media and via text messages – have soared over the same time period.

The Reducing Scam Calls code was introduced by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) in December 2020. It has seen telcos block over 549m scam calls since its inception.

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UK cybersecurity unit tackles record number of online scams in 2021

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More than 2.7m attempted frauds interrupted, including fake celebrity endorsements and extortion emails

Britain’s cybersecurity unit has reported a record crackdown on internet scams after tackling more than 2.7m attempted frauds last year, a near-fourfold increase on the figure for 2020.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), an arm of the GCHQ spy agency, said the interrupted scams included fake celebrity endorsements and bogus extortion emails. It stressed, however, that the increase in detection reflected aggressive targeting by the unit rather than an increase in scams.

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Identity scam scuppered when country postie ‘smelled a rat’

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Living in a small town can have its advantages when it comes to the rising problem of identity fraud

Knowing everybody by name is a matter of course in small country towns, and at a time when rural residents are more prone than city dwellers to scams it is proving useful in preventing identity fraud.

Last month, in the western New South Wales town of Gilgandra – population 4,200 – local post office licensee Stuart Border “smelled a rat”.

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Tech bosses face jail if they hamper Ofcom investigations from next year

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Overhaul of online safety bill reduces grace period for criminal prosecution of senior managers from two years to two months

Tech bosses face the threat of prosecution and up to two years in jail if they hamper investigations by the communications watchdog from next year, under a wide-ranging overhaul of a landmark online safety bill.

The government has reduced a grace period for criminal prosecution of senior managers by 22 months from two years to just two months, meaning tech bosses could be charged with offences from early next year.

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Internet scams to be included in UK online safety bill

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Platforms to be required to protect users from pre-paid fraudulent adverts as well as user-generated scams

Measures to protect people from internet scams will now be included in proposed online safety laws, the government has said.

Under a previous draft of the online safety bill, platforms which host user-generated content would have a “duty of care” to protect users from fraud by other users.

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Disinformation for profit: scammers cash in on conspiracy theories

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Some accounts claiming to support the Canada trucker protests are run by con artists abroad

When Facebook removed dozens of groups dedicated to Canada’s anti-government “Freedom Convoy” protests earlier this month, it didn’t do so because of extremism or conspiracies rife within the protests. It was because the groups were being run by scam artists.

Networks of spammers and profiteers, some based as far afield as Vietnam or Romania, had set up the groups using fake or hacked Facebook accounts in an attempt to make money off of the political turmoil.

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‘It felt like losing a husband’: the fraudsters breaking hearts – and emptying bank accounts

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Romance scams robbed Britons of nearly £100m last year. Thanks to online dating and the pandemic, these cruel crimes are more sophisticated and prevalent than ever

In February 2019, Anna, a finance professional in her 50s, joined the dating website Zoosk. She had been single for four years, recovering from an incredibly difficult, abusive marriage. “I was finally ready to meet someone,” she says.

So, when she met Andrew, a handsome Bulgarian food importer living in London, she was thrilled. The pair were soon spending hours talking on the phone each day. Anna was smitten. “He showered me with love and affection,” she says. “If you imagine candy floss, I was the stick and he was the sugar wrapped around me. I felt as though I was floating.”

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Government taskforce to tackle sharp rise in scams during pandemic

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Ofcom research finds 45m people received at least one fraudulent message in last three months

A government taskforce is to meet on Thursday to discuss ways to tackle the sharp rise in scams that has hit the UK since the start of the pandemic.

Groups representing banks, telecoms companies and consumers will meet with the minister for security, Damien Hinds, to discuss measures to tackle online fraud, and increase public awareness.

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From Fortnite to Fifa, online video game players warned of rise in fraud

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After games boom in pandemic, gangs are using phishing and malware to cheat fans out of money and reveal their personal data

Players of online video games such as Roblox, Fortnite and Fifa are being warned to watch out for scammers, amid concerns that gangs are targeting the platforms.

Multiplayer games boomed during the pandemic lockdowns as people turned to socialising in virtual spaces.

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‘She wanted $4,000 or she’d post the video’: how to deal with dating scams

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Romance scams on social media and apps are on the rise – but there are steps you can take if you fall victim

The dating game is full of the unexpected: it can quickly become apparent that photographs might have been in rotation for a few years or that someone listing their height as 5ft 10in could only achieve that height on tiptoes. But while those deceits may be forgivable if you hit it off with your date, at the other end of the spectrum are far worse cons.

In 2020, with more of us stuck at home, often desperate for some company or conversation, the number of romance scams reported to the crime body Action Fraud rose by 15%. Over the past 18 months it has received reports of more than 7,000 cases, with losses totalling £69.7m – an average of almost £10,000 a victim.

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Sowing doubt: people around world receive mystery seed parcels

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Packages marked as ‘earrings’ spark biosecurity concerns and global investigations into origins

There is not much that Jan Goward does not grow in her small Eastbourne garden. “I grow everything,” she says. “I’ve got the exotics: the aubergines, the chillies …”

But some mystery seeds she received in the post this week – ostensibly from Singapore, and marked as stud earrings – will not be joining them.

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Don’t click on the traffic lights: upstart competitor challenges Google’s anti-bot tool

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New charges for reCaptcha spur web security firm Cloudflare to develop its own identity-checking software

The days of clicking on traffic lights to prove you are not a robot could be ending after Google’s decision to charge for the tool prompted one of the web’s biggest infrastructure firms to ditch it for a competitor.

“Captcha” – an awkward acronym for “completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart” – is used by sites to fight automated abuses of their services. For years, Google’s version of the test, branded reCaptcha, has dominated, after it acquired the company that developed it in 2009 and offered the technology for free worldwide.

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