Toll Road Scam

Tony Bev · Guru

Toll Road Scam

Mike Harding · Guru

I am no fan of the banks at all but, to be fair, they do a *lot* of work to minimise fraud - the main culprit is the end user who is too stupid, gullible or lazy to check things properly or is frivolous with passwords and PIN numbers.

dorian · Guru

The text message in that news item has two grammatical errors, and the URL is suspicious. I would have at least contacted the real company via phone or web site.

https://www.linkt.com.au/help/security/about-scams

https://www.linkt.com.au/contact-us

By the way, not long ago I received a promotional email from a company which is a regular supplier of a particular service. This email invited me to click on a URL that appeared to be an altered domain name. After contacting the supplier, it was confirmed that this was their genuine URL. I don't understand why companies need to obfuscate their web presence, especially when there are so many phishing attacks that exploit similar looking URLs. For example, if I am a customer of mycompany dot com, I don't want to be receiving invitations from xyx dot mycompany dot com.

-- Edited by dorian on Thursday 18th of August 2022 09:16:08 AM

Mike196 · Senior Member

Have had that message on the phone. Pretty easy to work out it's a scam when you don't live near (or have recently driven on) any Toll roads.

yobarr · Guru

Mike Harding wrote:
I am no fan of the banks at all but, to be fair, they do a *lot* of work to minimise fraud - the main culprit is the end user who is too stupid, gullible or lazy to check things properly or is frivolous with passwords and PIN numbers.

Although I get my share of scam texts and emails etc, usually the poor grammar alerts me to a scam, and I simply delete them. As you say, banks do a lot of work to minimise fraud, and only last week I was alerted to fraudulent transactions on one of my credit cards. The bank had immediately cancelled that card and issued a replacement, so I will now have to organise to pick it up from a post office somewhere.. Last year I got a call from my bank while I was in a meeting, asking me had I just withdrawn $80,000? "No", I hadn't but they returned the money with no prompting. Like you, I am no fan of banks but credit where credit's due. (No pun intended!) Cheers

dogbox · Guru

the problem with the SCAMS is that they look so real ,i recently had one from my insurance company asking for my bank details so they could deposit an overcharge refund . i thought the sender must think i am ripe for picking , so i ignored it, got another one so i rang my insurance company to inform them of the suspect email , turns out it was a legit email they posted a check . i suppose when the SCAMMERS send emails they send thousands only need to fool one person to make a profit
nice of yobarr to let us know he could have $80,000 sitting in a bank account, will have to put him on my Christmas card list as soon as i get his address !!!!!!!!

Whenarewethere · Guru

Years ago I had a problem with a high end printer with my computer. The manufacturer needed access to my computer. They were brilliant telling me everything they were going to do on my computer.

But what it do show. Just how simply someone with an ulterior motive can take over your computer & I watched on my screen as the opened files.

It was a reality check for security & treat everything as a scam.

Don't store critical documents on the computer, at least have them on a separate drive which is in general unplugged.

dorian · Guru

Whenarewethere wrote:
Years ago I had a problem with a high end printer with my computer. The manufacturer needed access to my computer. They were brilliant telling me everything they were going to do on my computer.
But what it do show. Just how simply someone with an ulterior motive can take over your computer & I watched on my screen as the opened files.

A popular remote access tool for Windows environments is TeamViewer.

My NBN modem has a remote access feature which I can enable via its browser interface. My ISP's tech support can then make changes to its configuration until a finite time window expires.

When I had my own computer business years ago, I set up an overseas customer's mainframe so that I could dial into his control panel via a 2400bps dialup modem. I then had total control over his machine down to the register level in his CPU. I could also peek and poke RAM locations, all while the OS was running.

Whenarewethere · Guru

I had a small 3d render farm & ran all the computers from one montor. I even took the video cards out of the computers to reduce energy as they were not needed. They were basically CPUs & ram. Still, in summer 2.5kW of heat going into a bedroom while rendering so either opened the widow & door for cross ventilation or turned on the air conditioning, or both.

Ivan 01 · Guru

On a TV current affairs program ther was a report of a company ( one or maybe several ) who make up an exact clone of companies with shipping containers for sale.

The scammer includes delivery in the price so as to eliminate any contact with the genuine company.
The reporter phoned the dodgy company and the representative hung up when questioned about his operation.

The annoying thing is that it appears that nothing can be done to prevent these scams. Maybe buying off the internet needs more attention than just sourcing the desired product and sending the payment,

For this reason I only shop on the internet using my PayPal account.

Blues Man · Guru

I also only use pay pal when buying on line. Never had a problem.