AnglicareSA has partnered with the South Australia Police Cybercrime Training and Prevention unit to help residents in our aged care homes and retirement living units learn how to better protect themselves against scammers.

Cybercrime Training and Prevention Sergeant David Mitchell said while scammers targeted all age groups, there was a growing trend of older people being targeted with a particular focus on tech support scams.

“It can be an instance where you see a Microsoft pop up saying you need assistance, or you have a slow internet connection, or an unauthorised bank transaction has been detected,” Sgt Mitchell said.

“They basically get you to ring a “call centre” which is when a scam takes place, and people are losing information and quite large amounts of money at the moment as well.

“So, we are making a series of presentations to residents to educate what is a vulnerable demographic on the latest scam trends.

“We are giving them some tools, highlighting the red flags, and directing them to support agencies and where they can lodge a report if they find themselves affected.”

With the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Sgt Mitchell said scammers were becoming more sophisticated with their emails and messages via text and adapting their approaches.

However, he said despite the advances in AI the fundamentals of scams remained the same with the element of deception purporting to be a particular organisation or person.

“We are trying to educate the community to help them identify those common red flags like suspicious links or pressure to act quickly.

“We have done similar presentations with other aged care and health providers as well as community groups.”

 

Sgt Mitchell had some simple tips to help spot a common scam:

 

• • Phishing: Scammers make contact through emails, text messages, or telephone calls with commonalities within the correspondence. “The majority of time it will have a generic salutation. So, it might say Dear Madam or Dear Sir instead of your name. It will also have poor spelling and grammar, so carefully read it because sometimes it simply won’t make sense.”
• • Suspicious links: No government organisation will send an email containing a link, particularly key targets Australian Taxation Office (ATO), Centrelink, and Medicare. “Scammers will still try to use these links. If you hover your mouse over the link it wants you to visit, that will show you the website that link will take you to. Many times that path won’t make sense.”
• • Pressure to act quickly: This tactic aims to stop a potential scam victim from thinking clearly and logically. “Generally, there is an imminent threat involved, saying you need to act quickly, otherwise you will be fined or arrested. It may come as something in the form of a warning letter from the ATO for example.”

 

Sgt Mitchell said it was critically important that if someone was a victim of a cybercrime and suffered harm or loss that it was reported to the right department.

He said scam victims could make a report at a local police station, or simply head to the website Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre, a Federal Government agency, cyber.gov.au, and file a report to be sent directly to the specialist teams to investigate.

“If you have not suffered harm or loss, as in you haven’t lost money or suffered emotional harm, and have received something like a phishing email you can go to the Scamwatch website (scamwatch.gov.au) where you can also report scams.

“Scamwatch also offers a lot of resources and information to help you keep yourself safe from scammers.”