As you are probably aware, the flood of scams hitting Australia is on the increase, with most people having experienced either Scam emails or telephone calls every month.

The Australian government have a website called Scamwatch http://www.scamwatch.gov.auThis site details all the different types of scams out there from Fake speeding fines, Australia Post emails to unexpected winnings and everything in between.

This site also details on a month to month basis the number of reports from the public about scams, where they originated and how much money people have lost. The figures are quite staggering.

For example, the most recent is from June 2015, and shows

6.3million dollars scammed from innocent Australians in ONE MONTH!

Of course there would also be a lot of people who don’t report that they’ve been scammed too, so I expect that figure would be much higher.

Interestingly though, and a surprise to me, was the most popular delivery method of these scams :

And every month is the same. Telephone seems to be the method that works the best for scammers to extract money from their victims.

I know we’ve had the ‘Hello Im from Microsoft and you have a virus that I can fix for you’ telephone calls, where the caller tries to get you to purchase non-required software from them using your credit card and drains the account. And it appears no-one is safe with most age groups being targeted.

I know that even today we received hundreds of emails through our spam filters for Woolworths, Bunnings, Hungry Jacks & Jetstar scam giftcard emails destined for hundreds of users as I write this newsletter.

There are also more serious consequences to business with many of these scams (austpost) containing cryptolocker viruses which have crippled many companies with data loss.

The moral to the story, you NEED to visit the scamwatch website and read about the scams that are occurring and how to identify them in the future so you are not the next victim! Stay Safe out there!