Australians are bombarded with text message they think is a scam pretending to be from their power company warning about an electricity outage – but not all is as it seems
- Western Power users thought they were being scammed with a weird text
- Poorly worded message with a typo claimed an outage with a link to check it
- Users posted it online to warn of the scam – but not all was as it seemed
- Scam victims lost about $2.6 million in the first seven months of this year
Thousands of Australians believed they were being scammed when a text message arrived claiming to be their power company warning of an outage.
Residents of Western Australia shared the text online to warn each other of the scam pretending to be electricity supplier Western Power.
A strange link to details of the supposed outage, an obvious grammatical error, and the company’s name being shortened to ‘WesternPwr’ all seemed like dead giveaways.
The message tells the receiver ‘We’re sorry about the unplanned power outage in the (sic) your area.
‘The cause is currently under investigation and the estimated restoration time is currently 11am,’ it says, while being careful not to say what day at 11am.
The receiver, who probably has noticed that their electricity is…
