Following the break after the presentation on 'Stroke' by Fiona Kleinitz at Meet and Mingle on Wednesday 18 October, we moved on to our 'Get On Line Week' celebration, commencing with a presentation from Benalla based leading Constable Lisa Atkinson, who spoke about computer scams.
Constable Atkinson outlined how scams like identity theft, advance fee frauds and credit card fraud, work in an increasingly digitally connected world.
She said if you were attracted to the low price of say a caravan, offered for sale online, determine where it was and then find the telephone number of a business nearby and ring it to see if the online business really existed. “And if the price being asked looks too good to be true, it probably is,” she said.
One scam that came to prominence during Covid was “have you met your new puppy”? It worked (for the scammers) on the basis that people would buy puppies unseen online, but never receive the puppies or if they did, get inferior ones.
Lisa Atkinson said she realised when she married seven years ago, that she had hopefully stolen a march on some scammers, because with the fact of changing her surname, she had effectively disappeared from a number of websites.
She said it was too easy just to click on the address at the end of a website to make contact. But a safer approach was to check elsewhere and say ring a phone number from a legitimate online listing source like Telstra.
More information: scamwatch.org.au.
Following leading Constable Atkinson's presentation, a barbecue lunch, part of Get Online Week, was embraced by participants, who also enjoyed the music provided by our Ukes4Fun group at their first gig. 'Be Connected' class convenors Jenny Sawyer and Robyn Lukey were available to answer questions. This event was supported by a grant from the Good Things Foundation.
She said if you were attracted to the low price of say a caravan, offered for sale online, determine where it was and then find the telephone number of a business nearby and ring it to see if the online business really existed. “And if the price being asked looks too good to be true, it probably is,” she said.
One scam that came to prominence during Covid was “have you met your new puppy”? It worked (for the scammers) on the basis that people would buy puppies unseen online, but never receive the puppies or if they did, get inferior ones.
Lisa Atkinson said she realised when she married seven years ago, that she had hopefully stolen a march on some scammers, because with the fact of changing her surname, she had effectively disappeared from a number of websites.
She said it was too easy just to click on the address at the end of a website to make contact. But a safer approach was to check elsewhere and say ring a phone number from a legitimate online listing source like Telstra.
More information: scamwatch.org.au.
Following leading Constable Atkinson's presentation, a barbecue lunch, part of Get Online Week, was embraced by participants, who also enjoyed the music provided by our Ukes4Fun group at their first gig. 'Be Connected' class convenors Jenny Sawyer and Robyn Lukey were available to answer questions. This event was supported by a grant from the Good Things Foundation.
David Palmer
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