IDCARE has received many reports about a phishing text message appearing to come from Australia Post claiming receivers are the winner of a prize. It often appears in the same message stream as your legitimate Australia Post messages as scammers can ‘spoof’ their phone number. If you have responded with your personal information you will need to contact your bank as soon as possible (more below). We also suggest running anti-virus through your phone in case the link contained malicious software.
Australia Post has also posted the following details in relation to the issue under their Scam Alerts section.
Financial Institution:
If you have provided banking details (especially Credit/Debit card number) it is recommend you contact your financial institution immediately to let them know. Also request to have tighter security on your account i.e. add a security question only you would know the answer to, or a new PIN, etc. It is also recommended to change your passwords, ensuring they are strong and individual, after you have updated and run anti-virus software on your device.
Spoofing:
This type of technology allows a caller to masquerade as someone else by falsifying the number that appears on the recipients caller ID display or in text messages. Caller ID Spoofing does not utilitse the real phone numbers service provider, it simply tricks call/message recipients handsets into thinking the call they are receiving is coming from the official organisation.
Device recommendations:
Run your anti-virus through the device you opened the message on. If you do not have anti-virus you may want to consider doing a factory reset on your phone.
IDCARE recommends that individuals:
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Mon - Fri: 8am - 5pm AEST
QLD: 07 3555 5900
ACT & NSW: 02 8999 3356
VIC: 03 7018 2366
NT, SA & WA : 08 7078 7741
Mon - Fri: 10am - 7pm NZST
AKL: 09 884 4440
IDCARE as a registered charity does not ask individuals to donate or pay for our front line services. We are not a charity that can receive tax deductible donations.
We rely on organisations that care enough about you to care about us to keep our charitable service going. Proudly these organisations are displayed above and on our Subscriber Organisations page.
If you are asked for payment from someone claiming to be from IDCARE, please report this to us using our Report Phishing email.
IDCARE has access to the Department of Home Affairs Free Interpreting Service, delivered by the Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS National). Access to the Free Interpreting Service is provided to assist you to communicate with non-English speaking people who hold a Medicare card. Please note that the service does not extend to New Zealand citizens or residents who do not hold an Australian Medicare card, or to tourists, overseas students or people on temporary work visas.
New Zealand Relay provides services to help Deaf, hearing impaired, speech impaired, Deafblind and standard phone users communicate with their peers.
A TTY user connects to New Zealand Relay via a toll-free number and types their conversation to a Relay Assistant (RA) who then reads out the typed message to a standard phone user (hearing person).
The RA relays the hearing person's spoken words by typing them back to the Textphone (TTY) User.
The National Relay Service (NRS) is an Australian government initiative that allows people who are deaf, hard of hearing and/or have a speech impairment to make and receive phone calls.
The NRS is available 24 hours a day, every day and relays more than a million calls each year throughout Australia.