I appreciate the responses to my comment. Thank you. I’m not particularly techie so perhaps that’s why I feel the way I do!! (Though I’m ok with my computer!!) Personally, I would still prefer snail mail. (Why is everyone in such a hurry to get through life I ask myself?)
My niece, whom I wrote about, didn’t do anything about either the texts or email for a little while, so receiving texts/emails isn’t necessarily any quicker…when one believes they are scams, as she did initially. (I might add that she is a senior too (71) so is a most cautious person, as am I. At 81 perhaps that says it all about me?)
I also reiterate that I do not have a mobile phone. (Nor do I want one.) As well, I do not have any social media accounts either. Both of these factors seem to stun many people!! (No mobile phone? No social media account?) However, I realise that that is my own choice and that I am definitely the ‘odd man out’. Letters sent by snail mail, seems to be a dirty word in this day and age. Sorry I’m old school. Once again, thank you for your responses. I apologise if anyone is annoyed by my comments, but there you are.
Scams are a scourge and my heart goes out to all the folk who have lost money and in many cases their identities, because of them. Take care.
You certainly haven’t annoyed me @Norma!
Being a mature adult has its rewards and one is of not being overly influenced by peer pressure. I agree with you and I am sad if anyone falls for scams, a cowardly way to entrap people. I’m glad to see Choice’s most recent campaign is about ‘Scams’. Anything that can be done to alert and protect would be very welcomed by many.
From my experience: I changed to online payment notices after a few got ‘lost in the mail’ and I was alerted that my insurance had expired!
There’s also a problem with mailboxes vandalism, depending on where you live I suppose.
Regarding contacting banks, it’s not always easy, I usually just walk down my local branch if there’s any problems but with my last credit card fraud it was after hours when I noticed it and I opted to call the bank on their ‘report a fraud’ number. I was asked why I called and told there’d be a 15min wait, I agreed to be put on hold. One hour later an assistant took my call and apologised profusely for the wait. But I was glad to have had it sorted no matter how long the wait.
I echo your sentiments: a heart felt ‘Take Care’ to all!
Thank you Gaby. I feel better about my thoughts already!! Lol. I don’t believe it will get any better in relation to scams. There are always people who will do as much damage as they can. Not so much because they are good at it (which they are.) but because greed is their only God it would seem. Get rich quick is their mantra. I can mentally see their pouter pigeon strut as they claim another scalp. Anyway, I hope to be able to stay clear of these scammers and I shall continue to be as careful as I can. I can do no more than that.
I live in a retirement village (as does my niece) so I feel safer than most folk who live ‘outside’ so to speak. My snail mail is safe in this environment so I am fortunate indeed. However, I do receive most bills via email and have no objection to that at all, and in fact I pay them online too!! I was only referring to organisations which require you to update your details and similar. Obviously I can see that I am behind the times in that regard. Enough said I guess. Thanks for ‘listening’. Enjoy life.
I share a similar view that things won’t get better. Recent developments in communication technologies has been great for consumers on one hand, but has come with a major downside, the ability for criminals (anywhere in the world) to sting consumers with their criminal activities. Previous technologies made it harder or far costlier for criminals to use which was a major disincentive (their costs could easily have exceeded their returns).
Communication technologies were also set up based on ease (inc user cost) and freedom of communication and failed to identify the potential exploitation of the same technologies by criminals. This applies not only to Australia, but every country which has moved forward with their communication technologies.
It is now a game of catch up trying to close doors the criminals open. But, there are only so many doors that can be closed before ease and freedom of communication is significantly impacted.
That’s the real issue. The cost of using the postal system to attack everyone involved in the Optus hack, for example, would be large, potentially larger than any illicit gains. The cost of doing the same thing via email is almost negligible. The cost of doing it via SMS is modest. The cost of doing it via the postal system is also increasing.
From a practical point of view, the difficulty of doing it via SMS is very low. You can just iterate over all numbers 0400 000 000 to 0499 999 999. Sure, some of them will fail.
You can’t exactly do that with email addresses (although some approximately try). However vast lists of valid email addresses can be purchased for not many dollars.
SMS is a largely fail technology from the point of view of authenticity. You really don’t know who sent the SMS and nor is there an easy way to fix that (and no one seems interested in trying anyway).
Email on the other hand is in practice largely fail but can already be done securely, but no one seems to be interested in doing so!
So, I’m with @Norma. Paper is in practice more likely to be legitimate.
Didn’t click on the link, but the URL appears to push one to a website to download the 'Security Software" which will most likely be malware or ransonware.
Key giveaways are…never used this email account for Zoom and the senders email addresses.
… and the pretty random From and ReplyTo domains,
the invention of an entity that is not Zoom (Zoom Info),
the faulty grammar and expression
plus less key giveaways …
… the fact that T’bird thinks the message is “Junk”, and
the lack of personal addressing (“Greetings Customer”), and
for some people the fact that they don’t use Zoom at all.
And if you received that on a desktop or laptop, you probably aren’t going to be able to install some “app” anyway.
Yep.
I have taken to using one email address per entity that I deal with. (NB: Due to rewriting rules on delivery, that does not mean that I have to have 500 mailboxes or 500 actual email addresses.) While having multiple email addresses helps with filing anyway, it makes it much harder for scammers to hit a valid combination of email address and fake entity.
So if they hack Optus and start using the email address for me that Optus holds but it is purportedly “Zoom Info” contacting me on that email address then it is a) obviously a scam, and b) obvious where the leak came from.
Norma, my son recently received a snail mail letter from a bank that looked in every single way genuine. It did refer to receiving confirmation of something from the secondary person on the account. Given that their is no such person, he contacted the bank who confirmed that they did not send the letter.
It seems that nothing is foolproof.
