Protect yourself from super scams

10 February 2012

Have you ever received suspicious phone calls from telemarketers asking for your personal details?  Perhaps you’ve received an email requesting that you transfer funds to an international account in return for a large sum.  
 
Scammers are finding new and innovative ways to access Australian's finances.  This includes super accounts.  The Australian Bureau of Statistics has also found that Australia loses $1 billion each year to scams, and usually offshore.  

So how do you identify a ‘super scammer’ and more importantly, how do you protect yourself from one?

Once you become familiar with how scammers operate, you’ll find it easy to spot them. One of the most common scams in the super industry involves promoters of illegally-operated self-managed superannuation funds.  Typically these persons or organisations will promise you early access to your super account or will offer ways to ‘unlock’ your super account by consolidating and moving your super accounts to their self-managed fund. 

Once your super has been moved, they may take a large commission, or in some cases the entire amount of funds in your account.  As illegal as this practice is, it’s more common than you think and people are often further hit with tax penalties and fines.

Another common scam is where someone will actually assume your identity and access your accounts, stealing your super.  By accessing your personal information (such as contact details and online account details), they will contact your fund pretending to be you and withdraw your entire super savings.

There are simple steps you can take to protect yourself from these scams. 

Remember you can only access your super account before the age of 55 in very limited circumstances. 

Download a Withdrawing your super fact sheet for details. 

Do your own research and checks.  If you’re unsure about a company, get advice from another source. See ASIC’s Money Matters website and check that they are licensed. 

Always keep your personal information secure (including your TWUSUPER member number). 

Never reveal account password and login details and do regular changes of your passwords. 

Shred your personal documents before binning them. This will help make it harder for scammers to obtain your details and commit identity fraud by pretending to be you.

TWUSUPER has measures in place to combat superannuation fraud, but you can further reduce the possibility of becoming victim to a scam or fraud by taking the steps suggested here.

If you would like to report a scam, receive more protective tips or find out more information about scamming in general the information is available on the ACCC's Scamwatch website and ASIC's Money Matters website.   
 

Speaking of passwords...

There has been a lot of attention in the media lately about online passwords and how ineffective some of them can be.  SpashData, a smartphone application developer, recently published a list of the 25 Worst Passwords of the Year. 

While many of these passwords were clearly in need of changing, such as ‘password’ and ‘123456’, there were others there that didn’t at first glance seem all that bad. 

Here are some tips to help you create a more secure environment for your online accounts:
 

• Create a password with a mix of upper and lowercase characters. Include numbers and special characters (where allowed) for increased protection. 

• Create a password that is easy to remember but hard to guess. 

• Use a different password for each account. 

• Don’t write down your password or share it with anyone.

Test the strength of your passwords.  Use Microsoft's password checker to see if your passwords are strong.