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Phone and SMS scams

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The number of scam/phishing SMS's and emails I receive is increasing. You've won a smart watch to your package cannot be delivered.

Tedious is an understatement but SFA you can do about it except ignore the rubbish, report it (probably pointless) and delete the crap. Putting the message on send to junk folder will not help. They'll simply arrive from another direction.
 
As someone who operates a forum website I can tell you that the level of spam is completely out of control. This place is fairly well locked down but for the last six weeks ASF has been under a sustained spam attack and some has still gotten through the defences. Spam has gotten so bad that I have had to ban registrations from 95% of the world's countries, and quite a lot still gets through, mostly through VPN usage.

There seems to be a lot more desperation in countries this stuff originates from which is probably caused by inflation, the war in Ukraine and perhaps other local factors. Whatever the case, things are getting worse, not better, and I suspect that there is even worse to come.
 
Awesome. So I need to update the MyGov account to receive the subsidy.

First, what subsidy?

Second, I don't have a MyGov account.

Third, I receive nothing from the Government anyway, not even the Commonwealth Seniors Health Card as my income blows the married rate limit out of the water and I'm single.
 
I have been getting about 10 to 12 emails a day from various scammers telling me I have won something, been selected for something etc.
I have created new rules to select words that if detected , puts the email into the bin.
This morning when I opened the email, I had 27 emails in the junk bin that had been detected, plus two new ones in the inbox that had put hyphens or spaces into words to "outsmart' my rules. Its getting a bit tedious.
Then I just got two phone calls from two different numbers with a recorded message that I am fairly certain is in Chinese, but i cannot distinguish between Cantonese and Mandarin.
Either way I have no idea what they were telling me.
I think I am being targeted by foreign agents.
Mick
 
mullokintyre said:
I have been getting about 10 to 12 emails a day from various scammers telling me I have won something, been selected for something etc.
I have created new rules to select words that if detected , puts the email into the bin.
This morning when I opened the email, I had 27 emails in the junk bin that had been detected, plus two new ones in the inbox that had put hyphens or spaces into words to "outsmart' my rules. Its getting a bit tedious.
Then I just got two phone calls from two different numbers with a recorded message that I am fairly certain is in Chinese, but i cannot distinguish between Cantonese and Mandarin.
Either way I have no idea what they were telling me.
I think I am being targeted by foreign agents.
Mick
Click to expand...
Thanks Mick,

While still recovering from your self disclosure that you are unable to distinguish between Cantonese and Mandarin, I must say that even I myself have noticed an increase in spam recently on my Macintosh II and the telephone on the bar counter.

I find blocking and then deleting spam emails better than trusting the provider to tick them in to spam. Since I started doing this my spam has decreased dramatically.

As for the telephone the only way to stop spam is to not answer it at all nor click on any text messages, unless they are in your contact list. This is easy for me now that I am retired.

Telephones are for making calls not receiving them in Gumnut Inc.

gg
 
Garpal Gumnut said:
Thanks Mick,

While still recovering from your self disclosure that you are unable to distinguish between Cantonese and Mandarin, I must say that even I myself have noticed an increase in spam recently on my Macintosh II and the telephone on the bar counter.

I find blocking and then deleting spam emails better than trusting the provider to tick them in to spam. Since I started doing this my spam has decreased dramatically.

As for the telephone the only way to stop spam is to not answer it at all nor click on any text messages, unless they are in your contact list. This is easy for me now that I am retired.

Telephones are for making calls not receiving them in Gumnut Inc.

gg
Click to expand...
gg we follow much the same policy as you. e-mail scams pretty easy to pick usually poor to bad punctuation, or as has been lately some coming from Com Bank, which we don't bank with.
 
mullokintyre said:
I have been getting about 10 to 12 emails a day from various scammers telling me I have won something, been selected for something etc.
I have created new rules to select words that if detected , puts the email into the bin.
This morning when I opened the email, I had 27 emails in the junk bin that had been detected, plus two new ones in the inbox that had put hyphens or spaces into words to "outsmart' my rules. Its getting a bit tedious.
Then I just got two phone calls from two different numbers with a recorded message that I am fairly certain is in Chinese, but i cannot distinguish between Cantonese and Mandarin.
Either way I have no idea what they were telling me.
I think I am being targeted by foreign agents.
Mick
Click to expand...
Mick I once used to answer the landline scam calls and if a female was on the other end, would offer her a job in the brothel I ran next to where she was calling from.
Worked a treat, and stopped some of the calls for quite awhile.
There is more to this but I won't go any further with it.
I shall leave that to your vidid imagination.
 
Joe Blow said:
As someone who operates a forum website I can tell you that the level of spam is completely out of control. This place is fairly well locked down but for the last six weeks ASF has been under a sustained spam attack and some has still gotten through the defences. Spam has gotten so bad that I have had to ban registrations from 95% of the world's countries, and quite a lot still gets through, mostly through VPN usage.

There seems to be a lot more desperation in countries this stuff originates from which is probably caused by inflation, the war in Ukraine and perhaps other local factors. Whatever the case, things are getting worse, not better, and I suspect that there is even worse to come.
Click to expand...
Joe Sad to read this post of yours.
 
Garpal Gumnut said:
ABC reports on a Melbourne lady scammed losing a large amount of money from business accounts.

Watch out and be careful.

www.abc.net.au

'Money mules' are working in teams and make up the majority of scams reported in Australia

Over a four-hour phone call, scammers gained access to Jenny's computer and transferred $300,000 out of her account. By the time she alerted the bank, it was too late.
www.abc.net.au www.abc.net.au

gg
Click to expand...
gg how many more times will we be reading about this sort of thing. I would have thought that everyone would know all of this by now.
 
Just came across this thread about scams and scammers.
Great posts put up and some of the responses certainly put a smile on the dial.
We had one when I was injured purporting to be the ATO and if we didn't respond quickly the police would be knocking on the front door shortly.
Told said scammer hold there's soneone at the front door, yelled out it is the cops what should I do.
Wife said all she heard was click.
Add to it we are a fair distance off the road and have the entrance gates locked.
 
Just started receiving un-solicited ph sms scam saying we are in debt to the tune of $5.85 for a road toll debt.
I am assuming this is a toll for Sydney Harbour Bridge or the like.
Not sure.
What i do know is of course there are no toll roads in WA.
Got another hurry up again this afternoon, open the link and pay.
As usual the spelling and puncuation gives it away.
 
today I received an email from someone at a school in saudi arabia pretending to be CommBank security suggesting that there had been some suspicious activity on my CommBank account and it had been locked as a security measure.
It of course provided me aaURL to go and unlock my account.

I have a Telstra account, so I proceeded to forward the hoax email to the Hoax reporting account at CBA but the telstra email server rejected the email as being spam.
I got around it by taking a screen shot of the email and sending that to the CBA.
Thats fine, but the issue I have is that the outgoing email server recognised the message as a hoax, phishing email etc and blocked it, but the
incoming email server happily let it go through in the first place.
So I sent a complaint to Telstra asking why they could not at least flag the incoming message as suspicous.
So now I have opened up a can of worms.
I am sitting waiting for the AI system to answer my questions, but it seems to not know why Telstra cannot monitor incoming messages as it does outgoing ones.
been about 45 minutes so far.
The first one transfered me to one of its colleagues.
I suspect that the Ai algorithm cannot read the message on the image, and keeps going off on a tangent.
I have asked for the supervisor, who despite giving his/her/its name as Elvina, I suspect on the brief responses.
Elvina has also now done the I am transferring you to one of my colleagues bit.
This will be no 4.
Mick
 
mullokintyre said:
today I received an email from someone at a school in saudi arabia pretending to be CommBank security suggesting that there had been some suspicious activity on my CommBank account and it had been locked as a security measure.
It of course provided me aaURL to go and unlock my account.

I have a Telstra account, so I proceeded to forward the hoax email to the Hoax reporting account at CBA but the telstra email server rejected the email as being spam.
I got around it by taking a screen shot of the email and sending that to the CBA.
Thats fine, but the issue I have is that the outgoing email server recognised the message as a hoax, phishing email etc and blocked it, but the
incoming email server happily let it go through in the first place.
So I sent a complaint to Telstra asking why they could not at least flag the incoming message as suspicous.
So now I have opened up a can of worms.
I am sitting waiting for the AI system to answer my questions, but it seems to not know why Telstra cannot monitor incoming messages as it does outgoing ones.
been about 45 minutes so far.
The first one transfered me to one of its colleagues.
I suspect that the Ai algorithm cannot read the message on the image, and keeps going off on a tangent.
I have asked for the supervisor, who despite giving his/her/its name as Elvina, I suspect on the brief responses.
Elvina has also now done the I am transferring you to one of my colleagues bit.
This will be no 4.
Mick
Click to expand...
Mick. Festive Season just round the corner and so the scammers are starting to warm up.
Had a few recently but choose to ignore and delete.
 
I have been getting several scam texts purporting to be from Telstra in regard to my points that are due to expire.
Now I don't give a damn about the points really, what is getting up my left nostril is when the phone goes off at usually 2-3am.
Because of some other incidents that have occurred recently I keep the phone nearby just in case the call is important.
I guess the percentages must work as no doubt someone or many will be sucked in and reply to the link.
Not this tired dinosaur though.
 
And to add to today's woes after my debacle with the fuel servo (bank at fault) She Who is Never Wrong is now having trouble with Her 3G ph, even though there is still some weeks to go before the plug is pulled on 3G.
it is telling her only Emergency Calls can be made.
That's handy if she needs to contact me when She is away from home.
Looks as if I am going to have to convince Her that a new ph is now imperative.
 
farmerge said:
And to add to today's woes after my debacle with the fuel servo (bank at fault) She Who is Never Wrong is now having trouble with Her 3G ph, even though there is still some weeks to go before the plug is pulled on 3G.
it is telling her only Emergency Calls can be made.
That's handy if she needs to contact me when She is away from home.
Looks as if I am going to have to convince Her that a new ph is now imperative.
Click to expand...

Ebay refurbished phones are good value
 

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