According to the Australian Federal Police, "The term 'online fraud' refers to any type of fraud scheme that uses email, web sites, chat rooms or message boards to present fraudulent solicitations to prospective victims, to conduct fraudulent transactions or to transmit the proceeds of fraud to financial institutions or to others connected with the scheme."
Who is at risk?
There are a vast variety of online scams but only a minor mistake is required to fall into the trap. As displayed by the victims below, anyone with a functioning internet connection and an electronic device is at risk.
I am too clever for the scammers, right?
Think again! Here are some tactics used by online scammers:
Victim Name: Jennifer Victim Age: 22 Scam: Jennifer accepted money from a fake website, introduced to her through a dating site. Some criminals trick their victims into accepting fake or stolen cheques or allowing money from hijacked bank accounts to be transferred to them. Victims are then asked to send a portion of the funds via a transfer system. In this way, the criminals have effectively turned the proceeds of crime into untraceable cash while leaving their victim to face the legal and financial consequences. The criminals operating such money laundering schemes often use online dating as a means of finding new victims.
Victim Name: Jon Victim age: 19 Scam: Jon supplied his confidential information to a website claiming to be PayPal Jon was a victim of a phishing scam. PayPal customers are regularly targeted by scammers via fake emails. Be careful of any email purporting to be from PayPal that claims that you must click a link or open an attachment to supply personal and financial information. Genuine PayPal messages will always address you by your real name, not by a generic greeting such as "Dear Customer".