Latest / 360 with Katie Woolf / Katie Woolf spoke with Detective Acting Senior Sergeant Craig Windebank from the Cyber Crime unit

Transcript

Katie Woolf spoke with Detective Acting Senior Sergeant Craig Windebank from the Cyber Crime unit · 360 with Katie Woolf

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: And you would have heard us yesterday talking about some
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: of the scams that people are encountering at the moment.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: A lot of you getting in contact to let us
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: know that you've been receiving those dodgy text messages that's
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: either telling you you've got a parcel that you need
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: to collect or also sort of telling you that you've
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: got a voicemail and none. I mean, it's riddled with errors,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: so for a start you're thinking to yourself, where is
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: this come from and why is it being sent to
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: my phone? But joining us in the studio right now
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: to talk a little bit more about some of these
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: different scams and things that we need.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: To be aware of. Is detective for acting seeing this.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Sergeant Craig Winderbank from the Northern Territory Police, Good morning
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: to you, Craig.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: Good morning Katie.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much for your time this morning.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Firstly, on these text messages that people are receiving, is
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: it something that's been well reported to you guys.
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: We have heard about it. We haven't had a lot
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: of reports, but we're hearing about a lot of people
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: who are receiving these text messages with links in them
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: that are seen to be going to malicious places.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: So what do people doing? Look, if you click on it,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: what's going to happen?
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: It's Unfortunately, these SMS messages with the links in them,
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: if you click on them, there's a whole range of
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: sort of mailware that the offenders can install on your
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: mobile phone, and that could be things like interfering with
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: your online banking, getting your contact lists, stealing personal identifying information,
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: all those sort of things.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: So what's the advice if you get one of these messages? Honestly,
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: I reckon. I received three of them yesterday alone, so
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: and I know that there's probably other people out there
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: who are in a similar situation.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: If you get them, do you just ignore them? What
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: do you do?
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: Our best advice is to ignore them, delete them. Certainly,
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: don't click on the links, that's the big, big thing
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: not to do. But yeah, ignore them, delete them and
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: move on. I suspect that there's such a proliferation around
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: Darwin at the moment that a few people have had
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: their contact lists compromise perhaps, and that's letting them get
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: all the contact details of people in Darwin. And that's
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: why we're getting so many SMSs at the moment. But
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: we can't confirm that. But that seems to be what's happening.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, right, So once you click on it, it potentially
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: can get into everybody, sort of get into the contact
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: and then send the message out to everybody in that list.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: That seems to be how it's spreading out.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, that's not good.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: So the biggest piece of advice to any of our
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: listeners who are receiving those messages do not click on
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: those links.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: What happens if you have already.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: So if you have clicked on the link, you need
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: to be careful, practice good online security, make sure your
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: pass words are changed, maybe even reset that device, clear
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: the device's memory and turn it off and on again,
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: or even flash the operating system.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: And if you've lost any funds or something like that's
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: happening reported to police through cyber dot gov.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Did are you Is there any other sort of scams
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: going around at the moment? We did receive a message
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: or a phone call actually from a listener yesterday who
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: said that he'd noticed a small amount of money had
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: gone out of his bank. I think it was eight
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: dollars to begin with, and then it ended up five
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: hundred dollars had gone out got in contact with the bank.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: They I believe are in the process now of making
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: sure that those funds go back into his account. So
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure how it's sort of happened, but I
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: guess there's always different scams we need to be aware of, isn't.
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: There There's a whole sway that scam going on at
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: the moment, and COVID seems to have caused an increase
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: in it with everyone being online a lot more. We've
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: seen scams where you know, people are the puppy scams,
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: people losing the five ten thousand dollars and things like that,
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: right up to a scam where a person in darwh
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: And recently lost just about a million dollars through something
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: like this. So it's the whole range of it. We've
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: seen businesses losing fifty thousand dollars and that sort of thing.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: So there's a lot of activity going on at the moment.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: We really need to be cautious.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: And so with those ones where large amounts of being lost,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: I mean up to a million dollars, Look is it.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Are there different things we need to be aware of
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: to keep an eye out for, because I'm assuming that
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: something like that doesn't just happen in one transaction, it's
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: potentially happening over a period of time.
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's absolutely correct. We really need to be cautious
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: with what we come across online. Don't believe what people
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: tell you and take it as gospel truth. You need
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: to be able to research, confirm it's true, speak to them,
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: meet them, those sort of things. Don't trust emails and
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: what people say online.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because that's another thing that's been raised at different times,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: and you and I have actually spoken about this before,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: where you might receive an email that looks like an
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: invoice from what you believe is a legitimate business, you
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: pay that invoice, it's not a legitimate business. Somebody's somehow
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: tapped into your emails and you end up losing that money.
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: Yep, that's absolutely one of the issues we see. We
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: call that a business email compromise. They're quite prolific. We
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: also see the fake tech scams where people ring up
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: pretending to be Telstra or banking firm or something like
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: that and wanting to help you. We see fake investment
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: type things where people are inviting people to invest in
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: these schemes when really it's just an online scam. So
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: these whole sort of sway the things that are taking
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: place at the.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Moment, and Craig, do you reckon that there is that
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: increase because of COVID, Like these scammers are sort of
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: getting a bit more elaborate or a bit more creative
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: because they've got more time on their hands, or what's happening.
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: We've definitely seen an increase over the past eighteen to
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: twenty four months. Whether that's because more people have a
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: greater online presence, we're sort of buying more online and
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: things like that, we're not sure, but it's definitely been
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: an increase in that or whether it's just a natural increase.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And so it sounds as though Territorians are definitely
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: we're not immune to it. In fact, by the sounds
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: of it, we've had a few people who have been
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: really badly hit.
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: We certainly have, and looking at on the national picture,
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: our sort of increase is in line with what's happening nationally.
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: It's just a general increase in cybercrime where Australians generally
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: are quite attractive to international offenders in this area and
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: it's unfortunate, but we just need to adjust to it.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's one of those really hard ones too.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: I reckon if you've been scammed, or if somebody's had money,
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: if they've paid money to the wrong encounter, if they've
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: done something and they've been scammed, a lot of the
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: time they don't even want to talk about it publicly
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: because you almost feel a bit silly, even when it's
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: not your fault.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think that's something that I've found. I've
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: been in cyber crime for a while now, and one
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: of the things we say to everyone is you shouldn't
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: feel embarrassed about what's happened. The scams these days are
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: so technical and so well developed that they could capture anyone.
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: And it's not the old days of just getting it,
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: you know, the lottery or getting an inheritance. It is
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: really quite complex and the scams are will need to
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: spend a lot of time to spend a lot of
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: time to scam.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: You astry, Yeah, and Craig, it also sounds like, you know,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: like really you can't there's a lot that you actually
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: can't trust online. In fact, a large majority, like if
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: you get an email, you want to make sure that
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: it is absolutely from the right person, even when you're
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: paying an invoice. It really seems like it's reached the
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: point where you have to be making those second and
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: third calls before you hand over any kind of money.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely. I had to pay an invoice the other
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: day for a driveway work and I rang the person
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: doing the work to confirm their account number before we
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: paid it. I just don't trust what you get in
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: emails anymore. You can't do it.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I think it's really like it's probably very
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: sound advice for everybody, and all of us probably thinking,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: oh goodness me, you feel like you can't trust anyone,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: And I know that that is a bit disappointing to hear.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: But we don't want to be you know, we don't.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Want to end up losing our hard earned cash that
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: we've worked very hard for, paying it out to the
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: wrong person and ending up out of pockash.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: No. Absolutely, a couple of minutes of checking it and
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: just spending a bit more time might save you an
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: awful lot of money in the long term.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I've just got to question from a caller and
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: it says, why aren't mobile providers like Telstra blocking these numbers?
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: They do try. Unfortunately, the offenders are using a method
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: called colo overstamping, which fakes the number they're coming from,
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: so they're actually potentially calling internationally or whatever else, but
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: the number that's coming up on your phone is a
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: fake number, so it makes it harder for us to
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: trace as well.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, hey, what about with some of those phone calls
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: that come through? Because I know, even myself, I've received
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: phone calls before thought, you know, like, and they've said
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: we're calling from whatever organization.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: You think, oh, that's not true when you've hung up.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: But how do you, I guess you know, how do
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: you safeguard yourself from that kind of thing?
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: I suppose if someone calls you and says they're calling
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: from let's say, the tax office or something like that,
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: my best advice would be, if you all suspicious, hang up,
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: research the number independently and call the tax office. Yeah,
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: and so, hey, were you after me?
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: You just can't trust people calling you and assuming who they.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Are, and particularly do not hand over your credit card details.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Do not pay for anything unless you know exactly who
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: you're paying it to.
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: That's absolutely correct.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Craig, it is always good to catch up
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: with you. We really appreciate your advice. I know, that
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: a lot of Territorians obviously appreciate that advice, and we
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: want to make sure that people aren't being swindled out
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: of their hard earned money.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you,