Federal Member for Gippsland Darren Chester is reminding Gippslanders to remain vigilant online as a new scam targeting age pensioners is circulating the web.
“Scammers have been falsely flouting significant changes to the Age Pension in a bid to trick age pension recipients into sharing personal, identity and financial documentation,” Mr Chester said.
“The scam claims that “Centrelink has officially set June 15 as the final deadline for identity verification for all Age Pension recipients” as part of a mandatory process to strengthen fraud prevention, and that “failure to complete the ID check before the deadline results in an automatic freeze of the Age Pension”. This is not true.
“Services Australia has issued a warning about the new online scam, underscoring that there have been no changes to the payment system, eligibility for Age Pension, or to document verification for pensioners, and has urged internet users to double-check everything they read to make sure it’s real.”
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has issued a similar warning after identifying clickbait websites claiming there would be changes to superannuation preservation and withdrawal rules from June 1.
Mr Chester is urging Gippslanders to heed Services Australia advice and only trust information online about its payments and services from its official website, myGov or its official social media accounts.
“If a website URL doesn’t end in .gov.au, then it isn’t an official government website,” Mr Chester said.
“Beware of websites that might be trying to harvest your personal information, such as your identity details, myGov login details or tax file number (TFN) and think twice before acting on information heard from third-party sources, including non-official websites or on social media.”
For more information, including identified active Services Australia scams, visit https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/centrelink-scams
