Finance – Avoiding the scammers

With the ever-increasing number of scams making the rounds, by text message, email or phone, it is becoming more and more difficult to identify what is legitimate and what is not. 

Among them are many sophisticated scams relating to bank accounts and from people posing as the Inland Revenue Department (IRD).

There is always an increase in scammers posing as the IRD around the end of the financial year. There are emails, as well as text messages going around at the moment advising people of unpaid tax and unfiled tax returns and asking people to follow the link to pay the outstanding amount of file their returns. 

Recently, there has also been a scam relating to the cost-of-living payments advising that you are eligible for this payment.

It is important to be aware of how to identify scams in order to reduce the risk of falling victim to them. The IRD provides a list of ways to identify scams that appear to have come from them. Some of the most important things to remember is that the IRD will never ask for personal details, including bank accounts, to be updated by text message or email. Personal details should only ever be updated through myIR, or at the IRD offices. 

Receiving threatening calls, emails or text messages and being pressured for a quick decision is another telltale sign that you could be dealing with a scammer. 

Emails claiming to be from the IRD, although appearing to be legitimate, may contain badly worded text. Take a close look at the email address which it has come from – it might at first glance appear to be from the IRD but look for emails that come from addresses like ird.co.nz, ird.qovt.nz or ird.gov.nz. These are minor differences that show it’s a scam, but they can be easily overlooked.

Although it is becoming harder to stay ahead of scams, there are a few things we can do to minimise our exposure to this. Never freely give your personal and bank account details to anyone until you are certain that the person or organisation is legitimate. If you are ever unsure of the source of a call, text message or email, call the organisation that it purports to be from to confirm that the correspondence has come from them.

The internet is a great resource to use to verify what scams are circulating as most organisations will post notices of these on their websites. Stay vigilant.