Scams are becoming more elaborate, with many cybercriminals taking the time to build trust with their victims before swindling them out of large sums of money – sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That’s according to online safety company Netsafe, who spoke to Newshub ahead of the premiere of Patrick Gower’s new documentary On Cyber Crime.
Criminals try to suck people in by building relationships the victim deemed legitimate, before suggesting they invest in something such as a “cryptocurrency”, Netsafe chief online safety officer Sean Lyons said.
The problem is, that “cryptocurrency” doesn’t exist but, by the time the victims realise, it’s too late.
Netsafe’s latest report shows more than 2700 online scams were reported in the second quarter of this year, with losses as a result of hoaxes totalling $13.3 million.
Hoaxes reported were dominated by text message phishing scams, Netsafe said.
Lyons said scammers were building trust to the point they could talk their victims into doing things out of character.
“If the scammer can win your trust – you feel like you trust that person – you’re more likely to do an awful lot of things that you probably wouldn’t do normally.
“The romance scam has been found as a way to build that really strong trust relationship first… this is long, serious investment sometimes, this ‘romance’ part, in order to transfer it into something else and that’s why I think romance scams are so commonly apart of scams – it’s probably the…
