What to look out for after FMD email scam emerges

Scammers are using foot and mouth disease fears to try to get farmer details with fraudulent messages going to producers and industry players.

Scammers are feeding on the fear of the threat of foot and mouth disease by sending out emails asking for farmer details.

Veterinarians inject the second phase of the FMD vaccine in farm animals in Bandung, West Java, Indonesia, August 1, 2022. Picture: Agvi Firdaus

The Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry has warned producers to be alert for scam emails after becoming “aware of a fraudulent email campaign using the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Indonesia to hook in victims”.

“These criminal scams often use news and current events to dupe people out of their personal information, a process known as “phishing”,” a department spokesman said.

“They send fraudulent emails or text messages pretending to be from large organisations you know or trust.”

Farmers, industry and others have received the emails and the departmental spokesman said they would never send emails asking for online banking logins, credit card details or passwords.

Federal Agriculture Minister Murray Watt said official information should be sought from the DAFF website on biosecurity issues.

“Australians take biosecurity very seriously, and it’s extremely disappointing to hear reports of potential scammers exploiting that,” Minister Watt said.