TrendLife releases data for April and there’s a new contender for most popular scam

Impersonation scams are now the most popular form of deception to try and rid the average Aussie of their money or data as TrendLife (formerly TrendMicro) release the stats for April.

In that month alone over half a million scam attempts were carried out across Australia and New Zealand and top of that list were bad actors impersonating legitimate businesses in an attempt to get you to hand over your money, personal details or login information.

This form of scam accounted for over 60% of the total for April. These are the sort of scams where you’re told there’s an issue with a business account like a delivery, booking or payment. Perhaps even to update your profile – especially if in these cases you are pressured to click a link to verify details. This includes fake Facebook account violation emails which target Facebook Business page owners.

Then there’s shopping scams where deals that seem too good to be true, usually are.  People should be wary when a business tries too hard, too quickly to get you to check out.  As annoying as legitimate businesses can be by asking “Here’s something else you may be interested in” or “Add $x more to qualify for free shipping”, scams just want you to checkout as quickly as possible so stop, take a breath

You should also question the legitimacy of a business based on suspicious urls, those with limited contact details and those with poor reviews.

As a general rule it is good practice to be wary of messages that state that there is an issue with your account and ask you to log in using their link. Also popular were messages that reported problems with deliveries, bookings or failed payments. These are all designed to pressure you into sorting out issues by taking the easy and quick route of clicking the link. It is recommended that if the scammers just happen to get lucky and you are expecting a delivery or have just paid for an item that may have had processing issues, that you go directly to the company’s website. If there is a legitimate issue you should see it there

Romance scams also feature highly in the April figures and come in second, accounting for over 25% of scam urls. The alarm bells should ring if respondents ask you to move conversations to third-party channels rather than utilise the genuine chat facilities within their app. Of course be aware that scammers are still attempting to fool you by posing as a potential partner who just happens to have a family emergency and desperately needs your help.

Other notable impersonation scams are ones that many people are familiar with.

Emails from financial institutions such as PayPal, Banks and others alerting you to unauthorised charges or suspicious activity can also generate that sense of dread and urgency and may make you act recklessly.

Being familiar with them does not lessen the risk because if they didn’t work they wouldn’t be prevalent.

So as always never rush into seemingly urgent requests for data, login details or payment. Prevention is better than cure