From criminals impersonating family members online to get cash to tens of thousands of dollars lost in NFT scams, online scams are becoming more varied, and increasingly sophisticated.
While there has been a lot of attention recently on violent ram-raids, data from CERT reveals thousands of Kiwis are becoming victims of online crime, with $31.5m lost in the last two years.
Most prevalent were “phishing scams”, where criminals try to mimic an authentic message – often an email or text – from a trusted source. Many pretend to be from financial institutions such as banks or Inland Revenue, but others can come from criminals impersonating family members.
One person told 1News a relative had lost thousands of dollars after being asked for money on WhatsApp from someone pretending to be their child.
“Phishing has been around for decades, but what we have seen is the approaches and techniques by these cyber baddies have evolved over time,” said CERT NZ director Rob Pope.
He said they aimed for “social engineering triggers”, such as preying on fears, opportunities, and urgency to get their scams across to “very trusting New Zealanders”.
“That seems to be the key trend,” he said.
In the first quarter of 2022, 1370 – the overwhelming majority of incidents reported to CERT – were related to phishing and credential harvesting, the highest number reported in the past two years.
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