I have been an advocate of ensuring you know what you are doing, and double check everything before acting upon, so you don’t fall foul of phishing scams.

I can’t be more amendment on the fact, as you don’t know who is out their trying to get your hard earn cash.

Back Story

Earlier this week, I was phoned by a call centre claiming to be from the Australian Tax Office (ATO) with a recorded message saying that I had outstanding debts and was also implicated in Tax Fraud, and that there was a warrant out for my arrest.  I knew this was a scam, as I have been targeted 4 time before, as well as another family member.

On a sunny Friday afternoon, I had a frantic phone call from a client. They had a phone call from a person claiming to be from their phone and internet carrier, claiming that their method of connecting to the internet would be out of service for several weeks and that they needed to show them how to get around the outage.

Sounds plausible, right?  Without thinking too hard about it, you might say sure, what do I need to do.  The caller instructed my client to go to a website, and download TeamViewer (a tool that several support staff use to connect to a computer remotely); the company that developed TeamViewer is reputable and had no connection with the caller, and install the software.