Scams Awareness Week 2023

This year, Scams Awareness Week will run from 27 November to 1 December, with impersonation scams being the theme.

Scamwatch reports that approximately 80% of scams reported involve some form of impersonation.1

Scammers can impersonate financial institutions, telecommunication services, toll services, postal delivery services, and companies looking to recruit employees.

They can even pose as your family, friends, staff, or colleagues. Through impersonation, scammers can use different scam types, using a variety of channels, to trick people into providing sensitive or personal details, access to accounts, and transferring funds.

At CommBank, we’re supporting the ACCC, SAN and NASC to educate Australians on impersonation scams and how to protect yourself and/or your business during Scams Awareness Week 2023 and beyond.

Scams come in different forms, like phishing scams and more targeted impersonation scams.

While phishing scams can be quite common and often get picked up by your email provider’s spam filter, impersonation scams tend to be more targeted and sophisticated – impersonating someone you may know personally and asking you to share your personal information and/or transfer money.

Here are some examples of phishing and impersonation scams:

Phishing scams

Phishing scam emails, like the one above, often:

• Come from a suspicious email address
• Contain spelling/grammatical errors
• Create a sense of urgency to try to convince you to click on a link
• Contain a suspicious link

You can find out how to protect yourself from phishing scams in the video below:

Impersonation scams

Impersonation scam messages, like the examples below, often:

• Claim to be from an organisation you’ve dealt with (e.g. CommBank, Australia Post, Australian Taxation Office)
• Contain spelling/grammatical/formatting errors
• Create a sense of urgency to convince you to tap on a link
• Contain a suspicious link