Online Fraud

Online fraud is a blanket term for fraudulent activity conducted online. Scams are conducted over the phone, SMS or email and they can come across as quite legitimate.

Scammers contact thousands of email addresses and phone numbers every day, so there is a high chance you will be contacted by a scammer some time, if you have not been already. At first contact, scammers often will not have much if any information about you and the contact was probably through an automated, randomly-generated list or purchased as part of a list of thousands of emails or numbers exposed in a security breach. The scammer will not even know for sure if your email or phone number is working. They are just hoping that a number of the thousands of people they are trying to scam will respond, and unfortunately, many people do.


How to spot a scam

Scammers try to collect personal information. This is identity theft. They do this in a number of ways. They may ask you for your bank details so they can transfer "a prize" (for a competition you did not enter) into your account, or threaten that they will lock your account if you do not give them personal information to "verify" your identity. They may ask if you could hold some money for them in your bank account, known as fake mule recruiting or offer goods or services that may never be delivered (credit card and money transfer scams).

Some scammers have very professional emails, websites or call centre staff to convince you that the offer is genuine. They often look and sound like the real thing; a real bank, a real online shop or a real internet service provider. Sometimes they pretend to be an organisation or service that many use.