Police social media campaign aims to crack down on online scamming

Wednesday, 13 October 2021

Sally Lin is a first year student at AUT who was tricked out of $70,000 through an overseas phone scam.

Police have teamed up with social media giant Facebook to crack down on online scamming, via a new nationwide campaign.

Through quirky videos and amusing graphics the campaign website outlines advice about various scams, while offering information on how to identify and avoid them.

The campaign will run on Facebook and Instagram for five weeks, and will be emblazoned across billboards in Auckland, Wellington, Tauranga, Christchurch and Dunedin.

The campaign uses ‘Sam the Scamologist’ to offer tips and advice on how to avoid online scams.

Nick McDonell, Facebook’s Head of Public Policy for NZ and the Pacific Islands, said the campaign is especially relevant at the moment given the spike of online fraud occurring as a result of New Zealand's ongoing alert level restrictions.

The campaign will run online via its website, Facebook and Instagram.

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CEO of Netsafe Martin Cocker said he hopes the campaign will reduce the amount of money lost yearly to online scams. (file photo)

“Over the past 18 months, New Zealanders have been spending more time online to connect with family and friends, run their business and seek entertainment,” he said.

“We hope SCAM Gallery will equip our online community with the knowledge to identify and avoid some of the most common scams before they cause real emotional and financial harm.”

The project, designed by Christchurch-based agency Not Another, is based on a ‘SCAM Gallery,’ (Society of Con Artists And Manipulators (SCAM) Gallery), a concept which profiles the most common areas of online fraud in New Zealand.

The campaign traverses a wide range of online scams, from romance to phishing.

It is styled as a virtual museum, and sees scams displayed as exhibits that are curated by a resident 'scamologist' Sam.

Profiling the six most common ways New Zealanders are hoodwinked online, it traverses the likes of online shopping, prizes and promotion, phishing and impersonation scams.

Martin Cocker, CEO of Netsafe, which is also behind the campaign, said the roll-out is a response to the rising scam problem, especially of those found on social media sites.

“We've seen a significant rise in scammer activity over the last couple of years, and so we're pretty keen to work on any campaign that will help educate people about scams and reduce their effectiveness,” he said.

Cocker said the campaign will “hopefully make New Zealand as difficult to target as possible” and will “reduce the amount of money that is lost yearly to scams.”

According to Netsafe, New Zealanders lost nearly $11.6 million to online scam activity last year.

Detective Senior Sergeant Greg Dalziel, of NZ police’s cybercrime unit, said scammer activity hadn't merely risen, but the scams themselves had become evolved and “more sophisticated” in recent years.

“It’s concerning,” he said.

'We know scammers are often opportunists and will keep trying until they are successful. And if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

When online, Dalziel’s advice is to not engage with messages or links that are unfamiliar, never share personal or financial information with someone unknown, and, if you receive something suspicious, do not click on it, “please report it'.