Scams are becoming more sophisticated with how they target victims.

To help you stay ahead of scams, we've put together a list of common scams as well as our top tips on how to avoid them.

Scammers may promise you easy money with an investment opportunity. They will ask you to buy crypto through an exchange and send the crypto to them so they can invest on your behalf. Unfortunately, the website information and the returns they show you are fake.

These investment scams can last many months or even years. Once they have your funds it is highly unlikely you will be able to recover the funds you have sent to them.

If anything sounds too good to be true, then it's probably not true.

Scammers love to prey on victims on various social media platforms. Undoubtedly, you will come across many comments or direct private messages with a generous offer attempting to lure you.

There are many different scams you may be targeted with, they could range from giveaways to a once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity or just a scammer disguised as a friendly person wanting to connect with you.

However, one thing they all have in common is that they will request money or crypto from you.

Phishing, closely linked to identity theft, was the most reported scam in 2021.

Phishing scams typically involve a scammer impersonating a person or company to extract personal data (passwords, logins, personal information) from victims.

Scammers often send emails with malicious links to a fake website to gather personal details. Always make sure when accessing a website or opening an email you check that it is legitimate by checking the domain (www.digitalsurge.com.au) or the sender's email address.

Romance scams commonly start on dating apps or social media and involve long-distance online relationships. The scammer will try to gain your trust over time and will eventually begin to convince you to send them money/crypto.
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A criminal may try to recruit you as a money mule to transfer and disguise illegally obtained funds. They will offer you a large sum of money in commission for simply receiving money and remitting it to another bank account or wallet.

Recovery scams are when scammers contact a person who has lost money from a previous scam and claim they can recover the lost funds. In addition, they generally already have a lot of your personal information due to the previous scam.

They will ask that you pay a 'recovery' fee, often a percentage of the funds originally lost, for the recovery 'service'. However, this tactic is designed to take more funds with no intention of returning the original funds.

If you believe you may be targeted by a scam, please contact our live chat right away.