In the 25 years Helen Cahill has kept the books for her small business near Melbourne Airport, she’s never had any trouble doing online banking.
Key points:
- Helen Cahill mistakenly logged into a fake Bendigo Bank website and had $30,000 stolen
- There have been more than 35,000 reported attempts to gain the personal information of Australians since January
- Scam victims are encouraged not to be embarrassed and to report it quickly
So on a particularly busy afternoon on May 26, when she sat down at her desk, she thought it was strange it was taking so long to log in.
She’d googled “Bendigo Bank” and clicked on the first link that came up, which was a Google ad for the bank.
She then keyed in her login details, including a two-factor authentication pin.
What Ms Cahill soon discovered was that she had clicked on a malicious advertisement instead of the Bendigo Bank website, and that a scammer had gained access to her account.
“It was probably within two minutes that I logged onto the genuine Bendigo Bank … and realised that $30,000 had been taken from my account,” Ms Cahill told 7.30.
“I just felt really violated … I thought, ‘How can that happen?’ I really feel like I’m a very cautious, careful person when I’m doing banking.”
Ms Cahill quickly phoned the bank to report the incident, and also spoke to the IT company that looks after her business’ computers, called Ignite Systems.
They were able to…
