Government’s warning over ‘insidious’ scam targeting social media users

A new online scam is targeting Aussies on social media and duping them out of cash and personal information.

A new ‘insidious’ scam targeting Australian taxpayers on social media has officials pleading for greater online safety.

A new “insidious” scam is duping honest Australian taxpayers out of cash and their personal information online.

Fraudsters are impersonating the Australian Tax Office on Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms.

The scam operates by scanning public conversations on social media, where taxpayers ask questions of – or make complaints about – the ATO.

The scammers then hijack the conversation using a fake ATO profile, contacting the original poster directly with an offer to help and after earning their trust, asking them to click on a link or provide personal details.

Assistant Treasurer and Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones said community awareness was the best form of prevention. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Christian Gilles

Assistant Treasurer and Financial Services Minister Stephen Jones said community awareness was the best defence, and urged taxpayers to be careful with who they interact with online.

“A pretty good sign (of it being a scam account is) if they’ve joined recently,” he told ABC Radio.

“The tax office has had a social media presence for almost as long as Facebook has existed, for example. If somebody’s pretending to be the tax office and they only joined in October last year, that’s a pretty good indication that it’s a fake.

“And individual tax office employees won’t use a Facebook profile to contact somebody.

“In fact, no government agency contacts and asks for information over social media. They’ll use a secure portal to do all of that and they’ll never ask you to directly upload your information by clicking a link.”

Mr Jones said the ATO is working with social media platforms and other government agencies to remove these “damaging interactions”.