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Scams taking advantage of the Optus outage are already circulating

Opportunistic scammers are already sending out scam messages promising compensation for the day-long outage.

user icon David Hollingworth
Thu, 09 Nov 2023
Scams taking advantage of the Optus outage are already circulating
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The news comes less than 24 hours after Australia’s second-largest telco suffered a nationwide outage that lasted for around 12 hours.

While Cyber Daily has not seen the scam messages, we have had reports of the scam in circulation.

It is being spread by text message and is offering those impacted by the outage – pretty much every Optus customer in the country at this stage – compensation for the service disruption. Included is a link to a fake login page asking victims for their bank account details.

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Optus bosses have said, however, that compensation for the incident will likely not be forthcoming.

Matt Williams, Optus’ managing director of customer solutions, told journalists today (9 November): “We are not talking about compensation.”

This is despite Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin saying yesterday that Optus was looking at all options.

“We’re now starting to think about ways in which we can thank our customers for their patience as we work through the outage today and reward them for their loyalty to Optus,” Bayer Rosmarin said.

“We will definitely consider every avenue as we turn our attention, now that services are restored, to how we work with our customers.”

If you see this or similar scams in circulation, report them to Scamwatch.

David Hollingworth

David Hollingworth

David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.

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