Eliza Bavin* says Commonwealth Bank customers are being targeted by a new scam.
A new text message scam has been doing the rounds, with Commonwealth Bank (CBA) customers now in the firing line.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) ScamWatch Twitter account put out the warning that these scam messages would appear in the same text thread as those that were legitimately from your bank – making them even harder to spot as being a scam.
“Ever received a message that appears in the same SMS chain as a trusted business like a bank, but it doesn’t seem right?” ScamWatch said.
“It could be a scammer spoofing a legitimate phone number.
“Scammers can make fake messages seem real.
“Be cautious, don’t respond, and don’t click on any links.”
This comes after NAB issued a warning about a new text message scam that impersonated the major bank and tried to steal customers’ money in the same way.
CBA said the sophisticated scam impersonated trusted organisations by hijacking numbers via a trick known as ID spoofing.
“Criminals are using ‘ID spoofing’ techniques to gain trust and appear to be calling or texting from a trusted provider,” IDCARE managing director David Lacey told CBA’s Anatomy of a Scam podcast.
CBA said more than 70 per cent of scams were perpetrated using a phone, and while many Aussies believed they could spot a scam through the usual red flags – such as spelling and grammar mistakes – scammers were becoming more sophisticated.
Scamwatch has reported that Aussies have lost more than $474.9 million to scams so far this year, with 57,211 reports of people falling victim to phishing scams.
More than 59,000 people reported receiving a text message scam and losses had topped $18.9 million this year.
Scamwatch said, as alarming as the numbers were, around one third of people who were scammed didn’t tell anyone, so the true numbers were probably much higher.
*Eliza Bavin, Personal Finance Editor, is a senior journalist focusing on economics, personal finance and company news amongst other things.
This article first appeared at au.finance.yahoo.com
