Small Businesses Struggling After Pandemic Fall Prey To Sophisticated Loan Scams

• Australia named sixth place in cyber-attack targets, according to Scamwatch
• Offers of business loans and demands for vaccine registers are the latest to creep into our business community

Business owners struggling to keep their doors open are particularly prone to increasing and ever sophisticated criminal attacks online, according to Lucas Meadowcroft, co-founder of innovation and IT solutions company CROFTI.

Mr Meadowcroft said up to August last year in Australia, Scamwatch had received a massive 55 per cent increase in reports of cyber-attacks, compared with August the previous year, putting Australia in sixth place for the most hacked country in the world.

“Here at CROFTI, we are also experiencing a 75 per cent increase in criminal activity compared to the pre-COVID landscape,” Mr Meadowcroft said.

“We are still seeing the same type of scams that were developed years ago, but also new ones that suit the current business climate. For example, a new scam that has started doing the rounds relates to the COVID-19 vaccine, purporting to be from an official organisation and requesting the client’s personal details so that they may register for the ‘compulsory shot’ to resume their employment.”

According to Mr Meadowcroft, another popular scam is offering business owners and sole operators business loans to carry them on from the COVID climate, where they may have experienced significant losses due to lockdowns and isolation.

With JobKeeper payments finishing this month, he warned that business owners and employees are bound to fall prey to cyber-attacks more so than usual because they are concerned about their future and are looking for solutions.

Expert tips to spot scam emails:

• Relax, take your time to read the email carefully. It’s often when someone responds to email instructions in a hurry that they will get caught out.
• Does the format of the email look strange? Does the email address it came from match the organisation in the email itself? Do the logos and graphics look amateurish or point to someone who has no access to genuine logos or other corporate graphics?
• Are there spelling or grammatical errors in the content of the email? The style of content can almost always point to a creator who has little or poor professional English.
• When you click the link, does it take you to the company’s page or a completely random one?

Mr Meadowcroft said the purpose of the criminal activity is to coerce victims to enter all their personal details into a form, so the criminals ‘can steal your identity’. They will retrieve your passwords to access your bank accounts, go online shopping purporting to be you, access your confidential data, hold you to ransom and more.

“If you feel you have been scammed, immediately go online and change all of your passwords. Email, data storage, banking, online shopping, any website you have ever accessed. It’s time consuming, but even if the scam happened a week or month ago, it’s worth doing.”

Mr Meadowcroft’s advice to everyone, especially business owners, is to ensure they implement security upgrades, and empower their people.

“Your staff are your last line of defense. They need to know what to look for, and how to check for and report issues.”

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