Australians told to be wary of new myGov scam hitting inboxes
Edgar* was scrolling through his emails on Saturday afternoon when a message, purportedly from myGov offering him a tax refund, caught his attention.
He didn’t know it then but he had received a newly identified hoax doing the rounds, which is designed to swindle hard-working Australians of their money.
“I opened it but am always suspicious of emails due to endless scams landing,” he told 9news.com.au.
But this time, Edgar immediately spotted some tell-tale red flags.
“At first I thought it may be legit because it appeared to come from a myGov email, but reading the detail it didn’t seem worded right,” he said.
“Eventually, grammatical errors made it obvious it was a scam.
“Still, not everyone pays close attention.
“It would be easy to click a link and make a big mistake.”
His sentiments have been echoed by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
The consumer watchdog said it has received 1271 reports of the scam in just two weeks from January 1.
Of these, 607 were via email and another 638 were via SMS.
So many reports have come through, the term “myGov” started trending on Twitter today.
All of the messages had one major thing in common.
“Most scams offer rebates, or suggest there are security issues with myGov,” a spokesperson said.
“The link will take the recipient to a fake myGov log-on page to harvest login details or personal information.
“Some via social media are unrelated third parties requesting myGov log-on details.”
ACCC has urged all Australians to be wary of messages received from the government service.
“Never click on links in texts, and always access myGov via an independent web search,” the spokesperson said.
“You should never provide your myGov log-on details to a third party.
“Even if it’s someone you know.”
* Name changed to protect identity
