Belinda Smith’s five-year-old son has most cancers. Now, so as to add to her difficulties, she is being blackmailed by somebody asking for $2000 as a result of the telco large refused to pay a ransom.
“I bought a textual content message from a supposed hacker asking for $2000 money as a result of Optus have not paid their ransom of the $1 million,” she advised 9News.
The textual content Belinda obtained final night time learn: “Whats up, Optus has left safety measures permitting us to entry the non-public info of their prospects together with identify, e-mail, telephone quantity, date of delivery, tackle and license (sic) quantity.
“Optus has since not responded to our demand of paying the $1m USD ransom.
“Your info shall be bought and used for fraudulent exercise inside 2 days or till a fee of $2,000 AUD is made then the confidential info shall be erased off our methods.”
The textual content then has financial institution switch particulars and asks the recipient to ship a screenshot as soon as the transaction is full.
“I suppose they’re simply attempting to stress folks into paying the $2000, as a result of I assume I am not the one one who obtained that textual content message and hope that some folks ship them the cash,” Smith mentioned.
This afternoon the Commonwealth Financial institution mentioned it has recognized and blocked the account soliciting deposits in change for knowledge erasure.
Scammer’s plot introduced undone by a number of obtrusive errors in textual content message
Hours earlier than that, a number of cybersecurity consultants flagged a put up by the identical nameless account during which it claimed to have already publicly launched the stolen personal info of 10,000 prospects.
That put up additionally included a menace to launch extra batches every day for the following 4 days until calls for are met.