Don't be fooled

With online and phone scams raking in more money than ever, our consumer protections need reviewing. But so does our first line of defence: our common sense.

- GREG DIXON

It won’t happen to me. This is what we think. If an online scammer poses as our bank, romances us on Facebook or Tinder, asks us to put money in to a fake investment or pretends to be a child in need, we will not be fooled. That is what we think. It was what Angela* thought. She now knows better.

As the Dunedin IT worker recently learnt, cyber frauds can happen even to the most alert of us – part of her job is helping to identify email scams.

But then, that is the reality: every one of us can fall for an online fraud; all it takes is the right scam coming at the wrong time, or from the least-expected direction. For Angela, it was a message from her 20-something son – at least, she thought it was her son.

“Hi Mum, I’ve broken my phone again,” said the WhatsApp text. She wasn’t surprised. This would be her son’s fifth broken phone. “This is my new number,” the message continued. “Save it in your phone.” She did, and the scammer was away.

“It didn’t occur to me this was anything weird at all,” Angela tells the Listener. 

“There was a bit of chat, you know: ‘How are you going?’ I asked how his work injury was. He said it was doing okay. Every part of the conversation was normal. I just didn’t click that he doesn’t usually use WhatsApp.” 

fourth phone bought by “the Bank of Mum and Dad”. She sent the photo, and the $1486 purchase showed up on her card.