The Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia has become aware of an email impersonation scam which is being sent to members of the public. The fake emails claim to be from ‘fed court’, ‘federal circuit court’ or ‘family court’ stating that the recipient has been selected to participate in court proceeding as a ‘juror’. The email requests the recipient to open a link and input personal identifying information.
If you receive such an email or emails worded similarly, please treat them as scam email and DO NOT click on any links, download any attachments or respond.
If you are ever in doubt of the authenticity of any email received from Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia, please contact the Court’s Cyber Security team via email to validate its authenticity on cybersecurity@fedcourt.gov.au
If you have fallen victim to a scam email and provided your personal information, please carry out the below actions as appropriate:
- Contact your bank or financial institution if you provided your credit card or bank details to the scammer and;
- Contact the bank you made the payment to and lodge a fraud report;
- Lodge a scam report with ACCC ScamWatch https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/get-help/protect-yourself-from-scams. Your report helps to warn people about current scams, monitor trends and disrupt scams where possible; and
- You can also report it to the Australian Cyber Security Centre's ReportCyber page: https://www.cyber.gov.au/acsc/report.
More on email scams
Email scams are normally referred to as Phishing scams, a way that cybercriminals steal confidential information, such as online banking logins, credit card details, business login credentials or passwords/passphrases, by sending fraudulent messages.
To help protect yourself:
- Keep your anti-virus software up to date and run weekly anti-virus and malware scans;
- Be wary of emails that don't address you by name, misspell your details, contain a lot of grammatical errors and/or have unknown attachments;
- Remove email access from people who no longer need it;
- Use a spam filter on your email account and don't click any links on a suspicious email; and
- Secure your wireless network and be careful when using public wireless networks.
