Assertive foreign cold-call scammers appear to be ramping up their campaign in Otago, this time using a rural Dunedin school as a pawn in their game.
Outram School deputy principal Amber Paterson said she was horrified to learn several people from the Taieri area had been called by a scammer who said when the school was burgled recently a virus was introduced that was affecting their computers and would affect others if it was not removed.
The scam, which involves the scammer cold-calling a victim and claiming to be from an IT support helpdesk, has been doing the rounds in New Zealand for the past few months and is rampant in Australia and the United Kingdom.
The scammer offers personal information, such as date of birth, address and even purchase history, about the victim to sound authentic - and now adds information about local events to appear even more credible - but the information is all gleaned from websites.
The callers mainly have Indian accents and asked people to open programs on their computer.
The caller then plants "malware" - viruses, worms and spy software - on the victim's computer, or offers to fix the computer for a fee, paid for by credit card.
Sean Lyons, development manager for cyber safety group NetSafe, said it was the first he had heard of the scammers using local information, not just personal information, to make them sound more authentic.
"One of the reasons people fall for these things is because they think there's no way people would go to all this trouble if they were not telling the truth. They challenge people's common sense."Ms Paterson said she was shocked when she first heard people were getting the calls and the school was being involved.
She was later called by someone who was quite manipulative.
When she told the caller she was the school's deputy principal, the caller slammed the phone down, she said.
At an assembly on Friday she informed parents the scam had nothing to do with the school, and was surprised to see how many people appeared to have received similar calls.
She was aware of at least one person who was drawn into the scam.
"It's shocking, and very scary."
The calls follow a spate of the cold-calling in Mosgiel and Dunedin in October.
Police raised the issue publicly then, but Senior Sergeant Darryl Lenane said he had received no reports of the latest calls.
The increased incidence of cold-calling scams in New Zealand was predicted by NetSafe in October.
It said such calls in Australia had increased from 200 to 2000 a month and the same was likely to happen here.
It would only stop when people stopped giving them money, Mr Lyons said.
"As long as people sign up they will continue doing this, so we all have to take action to protect each other."
Anyone contacted by the scammers should hang up and report the call to NetSafe, police or Consumer Affairs, or report it at www.theorb.org.nz, which will notify all those organisations.
