How to protect yourself from hacks and scams in 2023

Around half of Australians have had their personal information stolen in the past few months after being caught up in the high-profile cyber hacks of two of Australia’s biggest companies, Optus and Medibank.

If you’ve been a victim, what can you do to protect yourself against fraud and scams by people who now have your data – and prevent it happening again?

There are ways to protect yourself against fraud and scams if you’ve been affected by the recent data hacks.Credit:Matthew Absalom-Wong

Choose your providers carefully: It’s easy to assume bigger businesses with more data are more likely to be targeted, but Nelson Yiannakou, head of financial crime at digital bank Revolut, doesn’t think it’s that simple. He says businesses large and small are targets, and it’s their commitment to security rather than their size that matters.

For starters, he says, “an organisation who takes cybersecurity seriously should be compliant with the primary standards ISO 27001 and ISO 27002 which establish the requirements and procedures for creating an information security management system”.

Use more than a password: Two-factor authentication is now widely recommended for all your accounts – even social media. It means you not only have to enter a password, but also a code sent to your device.

Put a ban on your credit report: Credit agencies such as Equifax, Experian and Illion and apps such as Credit Savvy can place a free temporary block on credit applications using your data for a few weeks, and you can then extend that period if need be. You can apply for bans with all three by engaging just one of them and requesting that they place bans across the board.

Subscribe to an ‘identity protect’ service: This is a longer-term solution that monitors dark web postings and provides insurance if you’re hacked. Optus and Medibank have bankrolled subscriptions for the worst-hit customers. It will cost you a monthly fee of about $10 to $15 and may be unnecessary if you’ve done the credit ban above, but it might also give you some extra peace of mind.

Be more suspicious: As fraud has become tougher for cyber crooks, they’ve turned to innovative scams instead, Yiannakou says.

There was an uptick in “remote access” scams in 2022 where hackers took over people’s devices. Criminals now also create ‘mule’ accounts under a victim’s name but with a different account number and convince them to transfer money to it. Scammers have even sent text messages to some bank customers from the same number as legitimate bank messages.

Cyber incident community support service IDCare warns that if cybercriminals have your information, they can tailor their messages to you and pretend to be from Optus, Medibank, hospitals, banks, or the government.

“Do not click on any links you are sent. Do not provide personal or credential information. Do not give remote access to your computer or mobile device. Do not provide any financial account details. Do not provide any payment … Make your own enquiries using an alternative contact method to the one they used,” IDCare warns.

Yiannakou says there are red flags to watch out for, including pressure and requests for unusual methods of payment such as pre-paid cards, cryptocurrency or others. “Whenever something looks and smells too good to be true and there’s a physical person engaging and creating a sense of urgency … they are all the red flags and warning indicators to stop and think before you press pay.”

Finally, you can check if your email address has been posted online by entering it at the website haveibeenpwned.com (although not yet updated with Optus and Medibank data) and take IDCare’s free scam resilience test to see how susceptible you really are. I thought I was pretty safe. I scored 42 out of 100.

• Advice given in this article is general in nature and is not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.

Joel Gibson is the author of KILL BILLS! The 9 Insider Tricks you Need to Win the War on Household Bills. Catch his money-saving segments on Nine Radio, TODAY & Twitter @joelgibson.

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