The worst thing is that there are Australians who are not necessarily stupid, but who do fall for scams. It may be a moment of inattention; it may be a mindset induced by the fear tactics of some scams; it may be the famous love of a bargain; it may be emotional vulnerability scans; it may be the sophistication of a scam (eg business invoice redirection scams)… The ones that break my heart are the scams that prey on the vulnerable and naïve (especially the older people of Australia who aren’t necessarily tech-savvy, or those with intellectual … not necessarily disabilities but some degree of intellectual naïveté, where the nature of the scam is to take advantage of that vulnerability.
The cost of a scammer using bots sending out SMS or email scams is negligible. Phone based scams are a little more resource-intensive, but the scammers speaking to potential victims once bot-dialled scam calls connect to them are very poorly paid scam call centre employees using a script paid for by the call centre business owner. It’s the owner who takes in the huge profits.
The “profit” margin is huge. The bot-generated calls go out to millions, and out of those millions the scammers will only need a handful to make it very very worthwhile.
The best thing we can do is to educate ourselves on these scams, enough to lower our risk of being caught out - and to extend this knowledge to others… ESPECIALLY to people who are alone, isolated, forgotten, not connected to a wider community, without family, more naïve, less technically adept - all of those or any of those things.
Business people need to be wary of any alteration in payment details (new bank account no, etc), and all of us need to be cautious. We can’t afford to think we’re above being scammed and we can’t afford to be blasé. For example, even IT people can be scammed, demonstrated by the fact that several tech people of whom I know have had accounts hijacked, have clicked onto links that they were sure were safe, etc.
I’ve had to confront my own thinking of not being a possible victim. Intelligent professionals that I know personally have been scammed; how can I consider myself possible to trick in one way of another? The obvious scams, yes… but we’re all strong at our strongest points, and ultimately as weak as our personal vulnerabilities.
