Netsafe

A warning, scammers may be changing their disguise rather than their tactics.

NetSafe has found 34% of scams in August were pretending to be a bank, up from 20% between April and July.

Scams pretending to be a government agency fell from an average of 37 reports per month to just 11 last month.

Netsafe Chief Online Safety Officer Sean Lyon says most people are likely to engage when they believe they're dealing with an organisation they know and trust, like a bank.

So the HDCA is enforced, um, primarily at, at first level by sort of like NGO-type bodies.

Um, th- it's like Netsafe.

The-- Netsafe is a, is an example of what they have in New Zealand.

Because we took that from New Zealand, um, unfortunately, um, uh, they designed their law that way on purpose because it was being enforced not by a state entity, but by essentially a, a non-state entity.

Um, we took that law, but we created a state entity to enforce it.

Is it? Oh, really? Or last few months because there is a rise at the moment right now of scammers pretending to be your bank.

And there is a warning from Netsafe saying that, yeah, the numbers are at the

moment crazy.

Yeah, I'm guessing pretending to call you and say, hey, look, we've got a problem with your credit card.

And I quit work to do five hours a day forensic computer stuff.

Contact the police, contact the Netsafe.

Can't do anything because it's outside New Zealand.

And also the messages just, just stopped short of actual sexual descriptions

our privacy yet, but the photos we post online can, apparently.

Sean Lyons is joining us, Netsafe's Chief Online Safety Officer.

Thanks for coming on, Sean.

Pleasure to be here, Jim.

So yeah, there's all sorts of stuff.

NetSafe has got lots of really good stuff on there and also CertNZ, which is now not CertNZ anymore.

You want Own Your Online.

Those are two really good websites that you can look at.

So yeah, there's all sorts of stuff.

Um, NetSafe has got lots of really good stuff on there, and also CERT NZ, which is now, uh, not CERT NZ anymore.

You want Own Your Online.

Own Your Online.

Um, responded well to deepfake AI, which has, you know, come into existence since the law was passed, for example.

But speaking to the person in this case, um, a guy from Netsafe, which is a private agency but the approved agency under this law, they can, they can act and work with the courts under the law.

Um, the limitations of it in a context like this are that it was really set up for one individual seeking to do harm to another individual.

And if there was a platform, third-party platform involved, uh, it was still only on that one-on-one basis and that someone was hosting something.