A long-time journo who thought he was “street smart” gets played big-time in the fast-moving world of cyber hacks, spammers and low-life deadbeats.
I sure wish I had a few years back; 2FA stands for Two Factor Authentication and will pretty much ensure you won’t fall victim to some slick-talking Nigerian hackers, criminals who’ve mastered Aussie accents and a knack for mimicking your friends’ lingo.I’m one of the tens of thousands of Australians who fall victim to the malevolence every year.
We are all used to spam emails in awkward, ungrammatical English about claiming millions of dollars for an exiled African prince. That’s so yesterday, these crims are smooth.Within minutes, friends and family and contacts were getting this kind of talk, trying to ensnare them also into handing over their accounts:
Yup... tried that a couple of times to regain access, but as soon as I’d get in , they’d snatch it back – in real time, as I helplessly watched.Which brings me to another key thought: that of feeling totally vulnerable and at a loss.The AFR’s Will Willitts learnt a tough lesson in cyber security, when he lost control of his Instagram account.Besides knowing family and friends were getting spammed and offered Bitcoin at a “top discount”, I had lost a community built up through the pandemic.
“The bad guys are becoming ever more sophisticated in their approach and the damage that they can do across all platforms,” one techie told me. He tried reporting the fraud to Instagram and got a quick automated response that the account didn’t “breach their terms of service”. Luckily, he was able to “kick up a fuss with Instagram parent Meta” and the fake account vanished. Another workmate at Nine Entertainment, who prefers the dignity of anonymity, says he lost control of a professional Instagram site hosting his art portfolio.Several attempts to get in contact with Insta’s gatekeepers proved “increasingly irritating”, he says.
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