Let’s talk about fraud, baby.

In the increasingly technological world, cyber fraud affects online businesses and individuals the most. With internet services and online payment systems becoming more convenient for consumers to pay their bills, purchase their shopping online and even making online reservations, people today are slowly dropping their guard for other companies or people to gain access to our personal information.

Our lives have become easier and faster but are we safer?

With many people nowadays entering their personal details and credit cards online, it has opened a door for fraudsters into our lives. Apart from the traditional online fraud methods such as malicious software and ingenious phishing scams coming from all over the world, there are new emerging fraud trends that consumers should be aware of.

There are some common places where fraud begins:

• Online shops
• Emails
• Social media networks

As 46% of the world is internet users, we need to be aware of the most common methods of fraud to protect ourselves and people around us from falling into fraudsters’ traps.

Phishing scams

Phishing scams are based on communication via emails or social media websites. Fraudsters will send people a message trying to lure them into a third party website, looking like the authentic website, and asking people to provide their personal details, generally pretending they are from an official source such as a bank, financial institutions or delivery companies.

Money laundering

This scam usually begins with an emotional message from a person pretending to be a member from the government, businessman, a member of a wealthy family or a member of a royal family (usually from overseas), asking  people to help them retrieve some money in return for a larger sum of money when they are out of trouble. This scam usually keeps going on where the cybercriminal continuously ask for a bit more money until the victim is left broke. In some instances people were also kidnapped.

Greeting card scams

This form of scam has been around for a while, where people are sent a greeting card and once they have clicked to view it, malicious software is automatically downloaded to their computer. Sometimes this will be in the form of an annoying pop-up, which constantly shows up with annoying ads as well as sending private data to a fraudulent server.

There are many other ways that fraudsters are invading out lives and a principle I live by is: if you don’t know it, don’t open it. 

Being brought up in a typical Chinese family in Australia, Vivian takes pride as an ABC (Australia-born Chinese) where she happily embraces both the Chinese and Australian cultures. 

In high school, Vivian wanted to become a fashion designer, however she has developed a passion for running events after working backstage for multiple live shows. Prior to starting at Akolade, Vivian worked 4 years in the wine industry and she misses the wine tasting sessions and openly drinking on the job. As the Marketing Coordinator, Vivian enjoys using her creativity to design unique and fun campaigns for each event. In her spare time, Vivian loves to spend time with her two adorable pets; a cat and a dog.