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Post by musicalneptunian on Jun 21, 2021 0:11:40 GMT
Yesterday someone in my family got a text on his phone. It was weird. It claimed to be someone from the ATO [Australian Tax Office] who needed to interview him about tax. OK,so far that is a boring scam text. But it also had some details about his business that were the exact five numbers of his "owners corporation plan" which is a required number if you have, as he does, an investment property. We don't know how the scammer obtained this. Either
[1] the scammer used computer hacking [2] they used dumpster diving; we shred everything but someone else, such as people who oversee his property, might not have.
[3] It is public information somewhere. We find this unlikely. But there might be some website with it on somewhere such as a council records website.
He is going to report the scam to the ATO [Australian Tax Office] scam reporting site.
But I wonder about the bigger picture. If the scammer has this information what other information of a personal nature could they have? I have told him to be on the look out for any weird bank activity or identity fraud. This was a relatively sophisticated scam attempt. The things that tipped us off were the slightly stilted English used and that the text asked for the "taxation accountant" and the family member isn't one so why was it sent to him?
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Post by Linoline on Jun 21, 2021 6:56:03 GMT
Good that they caught on so quickly. I have no idea if these records are public, but in this digital age, a lot of personal information ends up on the street so it's always good to be careful. I got contacted on my private mobile number by a scammer last week. Indian call center. I signed up for a course once and they used that exact business to try to get my credit card information by offering me a free course. Apparently there has been a data leak in the real company. "why are you not interested?" They seemed genuinely surprised.
If he's worried then it might be an idea to go to the police to make a statement. If anything happens that looks like identity theft they'll be already aware of what happened. Not that they can do anything right now I think, but it might ease the mind a bit that the authorities are aware.
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Post by musicalneptunian on Jun 21, 2021 9:27:22 GMT
This has taken another weird twist.
My family member has phoned the ATO [Australian Tax Office] using their real number from their website so nothing funny going on!
IT'S NOT A SCAM!
It's a real ATO inquiry about some tax that he forgot to pay!
Of course some witty person would say with dry humor that it is still a scammer. Anyway, good news I suppose.
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Post by Linoline on Jun 21, 2021 10:16:28 GMT
scammers can spoof numbers. It happens a lot here (NL) that scammers use some software that makes it look like they call from the number of a bank and because people trust the number, they get scammed.
Just to be on the side of caution. Let him phone the ATO himself to see if it's real
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sue1950
Roadside Gala Seller
Confuses Scammers
Posts: 86
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Post by sue1950 on Jul 8, 2021 15:53:47 GMT
In the U.K. they would almost certainly write to you about a tax query.
We have a lot of spoofed numbers here and I often ring the scammers numbers back and have spoken to people who have absolutely nothing to do with the scam but have had their numbers spoofed.
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