Yes, I have received emails/SMS and phone calls that I thought were spam -- I never open any even if they do promise me a mountain of cash or other goodies --

 You get nothing for nothing -- in fact, it is true that you likely get nothing for something

For some odd reason, Thursday night is my "email scams" night, many purporting to be from trusted Aussie institutions.

Sometimes as many as 20 ... when I 'hover' over the sources ... it's like a world wide tour LOL.

Sort of Dumb and Dumber stuff.

There are huge syndicates all over the world scamming people out of $millions.

The ones that fascinate me are those who manage to steal money from someone they've not even met in person, by clever sweet talking and manipulation.

It's surprising how many intelligent, well educated people, looking for love online, send money to total strangers.

Insight did a program on this not long ago.

I also think many get scammed because they also are greedy and when promised some monetary benefit thats when they get sucked in.

As far as the ones on dating scams I guess sadly it is a case of them being very lonely -- not that I ever understand how they can think that someone that that is fair dinkum would do such a thing.

The countless phone callers with accents so thick you can hardly understand a word they're saying are easy enough to spot.  As are the emails with bad grammar, suggesting English isn't their first language.

But some scammers are very clever.  We have more than a few home grown scammers too and those aren't quite so easy to spot, as many have discovered.

We had one a couple of years ago, claiming to be from our Telstra, saying there was a problem with our last direct debit and would we please pay over the phone or our internet would be automatically cut off.

Hubby nearly fell for that one.  I told him the first clue should have been that it was an Aussie on the phone, no overseas accent.  Couldn't possibly have been Telstra.  LOL.

Scammers?  There's a never ending stream.  Many of them onshore.  The ACCC never stops or even tries to stop these crooks so Australians continue to be robbed.

Haven't had too many scammers. Answering machines looks after that!. Had a few emails from different places offering to send huge sums of money if I send a "facilitating amount". I just tell them to send the funds minus costs but I never seem to get any.

I love the "Telstra technical " services who tell me my computer is being hacked and they will fix it for me. As someone who has worked on computers for many years I love to string then along, playing dumb. "Yes, its loading now" Not even switched on. "yes, its very slow" After about 20 minutes they get bored or if they stay on. "yes, I have loaded that, what does it say?" "its says that this is a scam" 

Best part is the tell me I have a problem with my Telstra router. Don't even have a Telstra account!

Gets 'em every time. They never learn. Its so much fun , specially when they complain about me wasting their time. Hey, thats the whole idea.

Sorry to say this but unless one is in very poor health or quite deaf or psychologically challenged..I really don't see how they can be taken in by scammers these days.

With so much information and warnings..why is this still happening? Buy an answering machine!

Had one today. Are you the owner of an orange car? Me: no, you must have the wrong number, hung up. However, a few years ago our computer was taken over and they would only release the word and excel files if we paid $500 in bitcoin. We had to get the hard drive cleared. Lucky we back up important info

I have had a few scam calls recently where they say they are from the “no scam call register”. My daughter has also had these calls. In the second one I received I said “how can you live with yourself attempting to scam people”. She hung up. 

A new scam as reported by Suze...

THIS IS A SCAM!!!

Please share and report if you receive it!

A new scam reported by Celia

Australia Post scam alert: The VERY convincing emails targeting customers