No day or issue is safe from scammers, as the weekend and the Omicron wave turned out a new scam scaring its way to phones across the country.
Even though Aussies have a variety of ways to go on the defence against SMS scams, they’re still trickling in.
While Telstra has a degree of artificial intelligence working for it in its Cleaner Pipes program, and Australia’s other telcos are no doubt working on something similar, the scams are still seeping on in, coming in and making your day-to-day a touch more complex, as you try to work out which message is real and which one is fake.
If you receive a message purporting to be from “Medicare” about being near someone who has tested positive from Omicron, you might want to take it with a grain of salt.
While the Omicron wave is definitely happening in Australia and something of a risk, Medicare is not sending out messages to tell you to get an Omicron test kit, and text messages going out advising you to click a link are yet another scam.
What’s going on, and how do you know?
A Medicare SMS scam
We’re not the only ones who have picked up on this, and while it’s not the first time we’ve seen government details implied for scams before, it surely won’t be the last. Phishing scams pretending to be from the government seem to be weekly at the moment, and this is just another on a word ending with “day”.
However, the latest SMS scam attempt is easily capitalising on what’s happening…
