There’s a cooked new Australia Post text message scam so be wary if you’ve done an ASOS haul recently. Before you scroll away ‘cos you’re not a boomer, this scam is clever enough to have fooled society’s brightest technological minds — young people. All because the texts come from the official AusPost ID.
AusPost itself has confirmed that the scam’s been doing the rounds. A post on its website said that the scammers send a parcel delivery update link from an AusPost ID.
The link asks customers to pay a delivery fee. Then BOOM. Scammed.
“Due to the way smart phones group these communications, the scam text would appear together with the legitimate thread of Australia Post messages,” the company explains.
So yeah, pretty fucked that your phone will tell you it’s a legit AusPost message.
Sydney woman Alex told PEDESTRIAN.TV she fell for the scam. She got the text when she was in a meeting, so was only half paying attention to the details.
“I was expecting a package so when a message came through from the AusPost number that always updates me on deliveries, I just assumed it was legit,” she said.
“I was waiting on a package and the link I clicked told me I’d need to pay a rescheduling fee to do it. It was $1.99 and since I was only half paying attention I just paid it… as soon as did I was like ‘ah, fuck’.
“I’m so annoyed, I feel like such a boomer that I fell for it.”
Alex called her bank and froze her account. The woman she spoke to at the bank said she’d had fkn loads of calls about the same scam.
The fact that these messages are coming from a legit-looking number is even more concerning. I see the Aus Post text, I click the link. No thoughts needed… until now.
PEDESTRIAN.TV’s editor Josie almost (almost) fell for the scam but realised the link was suss when it asked for a zip code instead of a post code.
“I automatically clicked on the link because it came from the usual AusPost number,” she said.
“When it took me to the website it all looked normal, but what rang alarm bells for me was when it asked for a ‘zip code’.
“I went back and checked the link and realised it was dodgy!”
So how can you suss if you’ve been sent a dodgy link? I put my journalist hat on and by that I mean I found my lengthy, lengthy AusPost text thread because I fkn love an online shop.
All the legit links I’ve been sent are from a URL called https://mypo.st/. But if you look at screenshots of the dodgy texts shared with PEDESTRIAN.TV and on the Aus Post website, the URLs are different.
Some of the scam URLs contain the words “AusPost” while others are bit.ly links.
The message here? Don’t click on any weird looking links even if they’re from the AusPost text ID.
If a text link is asking you for your cold hard cash, exit that tab swiftly. Godspeed my online shopping friends.
