A simple road toll text scam is taking a massive toll on unsuspecting victims, with some people losing their life savings.<\/p>\n
Department of Internal Affairs deputy director of operations John Michael says the scam is “really widespread” and concerning.<\/p>\n
He told\u00a0Checkpoint\u00a0<\/i>as of today, from 1 November 2022 there had been 140,000 complaints – a number most likely under reported.<\/p>\n
So how does the scam work?<\/p>\n
The message would look like it came from legitimate agencies like Waka Kotahi, NZ Post, Inland Revenue or a bank and was often sent by a number with either a 64 or 61 prefix at the beginning – country codes from New Zealand and Australia.<\/p>\n
It would encourage you to click on a link and pay a bill or toll, sometimes to collect a cash prize.<\/p>\n
Michael said by clicking on the link sent to you, you would generally be taken to a bogus website or malicious software would be installed on to your device, giving the scammer access to your personal information and banking details.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
VIA RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A simple road toll text scam is taking a massive toll on unsuspecting victims, with some people losing their life savings. Department of Internal Affairs deputy director of operations John Michael says the scam is “really widespread” and concerning. He told\u00a0Checkpoint\u00a0as of today, from 1 November 2022 there had been 140,000 complaints – a number […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5363"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5363\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5364,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5363\/revisions\/5364"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}