Commerce Commission supports Fraud Awareness Week

16 November 2015

Commerce Commission supports Fraud Awareness Week

The Commission is reminding New Zealand small businesses to remain vigilant about avoiding scams as it supports Fraud Awareness Week, which runs until Saturday.

Scams are increasing globally and the international week aims to raise awareness of the dangers of scams and to inform consumers and small businesses about how they can protect themselves.

General Manager of Competition, Kate Morrison says that as part of the week, the Commission is launching a scams webpage to provide information about the scams (or potential scams) it has investigated and offer some general advice on how to avoid them.

“Scammers are always coming up with new and sophisticated methods to trick consumers into handing over their money or personal information – especially with today’s technology. We know that small businesses have been a particular focus of scams, so we are pleased to support that theme this year.”

“Our scams webpage is an additional resource for consumers and small businesses to find information to assist them in protecting themselves from scams.”

In recent months the Commission has published media releases warning of three traders which targeted New Zealand small businesses. Corporate Portal New Zealand and Global Map Index both sent unsolicited mail asking businesses to urgently update their company details for their online business directories. In both cases, businesses reported being misled into signing up to an expensive contract when they were under the impression that updating their company details for the directory was free.

The third case was when the Commission received over 100 complaints about New Zealand Small Business Assistance Centre. Businesses complained of paying for information about grants when they weren’t eligible for them and that the information they received was already freely available from other government departments.

Nationally, small businesses are also a growing target for scams. NetSafe have said the number of New Zealand small business incidents have tripled compared with the 140 they received last year. In 2014 35 victims lost $788,253 to scams, giving an average incident loss of $22,521.

Ms Morrison says the Commerce Commission has seen its own increase in scam related complaints with 88 last year, compared with 50 the year before.

“There are lots of devastating stories of people losing money to scams. Many of these scams originate from overseas which makes it almost impossible to recover the money and much harder for agencies to disrupt.”

“That’s why raising awareness of scams and how to avoid them is important. We advise people to not be lured into an overly attractive offer before checking that it is genuine. If in doubt, just say no and don’t be rushed into making a decision,” Ms Morrison said.

ends

© Scoop Media