He said: “I first twigged something was wrong when I started receiving phone calls on Sunday morning about properties for rent on our website that were not in locations we list in.
“Some of the properties were in Melbourne, Brisbane, Tasmania and Western Australia, and for silly prices to bait people to apply.
“As soon as I found out we contacted the portal who uploads our listings who took them down on the same day. We also contacted anyone who made enquiries to find out if they had applied, but fortunately no one had filled in an application form.”
If anyone had filled in the application form, including their bank details, it is possible the scammers could have stolen money from their account together with their identity.
It is not known how the scammers gained access to upload the listings and this incident is the latest of several scams which have targeted real estate agencies.
REINSW reported in May how a member had $757,000 stolen from their trust account in an online theft. Read more about the theft here.
How can you protect yourself from online scams?
There are several cyber insurance policies available, but these only cover certain incidents.
Jardine Lloyd Thompson, the agent of Realcover, say a cyber insurance would not normally cover a pure financial loss from fraudulent access which doesn’t involve the loss or damage of data or a consequential business interruption loss caused by a system outage.
However, some insurance would offer this cover as an extension for an additional premium.
JLT added there are crime insurance policies which will normally extend the cover to include “the unlawful taking or fraudulently induced transfer of monies resulting from computer violation or unauthorised manipulation of computer systems”.
The benefits of a crime policy are:
- It can be tailored to clients’ needs
- Coverage includes acts by unidentified employees
- It can be extended to cover third party theft, forgery, counterfeiting and computer crime making it a comprehensive commercial crime policy.
REINSW also advises members to be diligent in checking their website frequently to avoid a similar situation.