NSW commuters have been warned to be aware of a new scam text claiming they didn’t ‘tap off’ when using their public transport Opal card.
Transport NSW said the scam text could use a ‘spoofing’ technique, which mimics its sender information, meaning the text may appear to come from the legitimate source.
“Text messages have been circulating with false information that could appear to come from Transport for NSW,” Transport NSW warned.
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“We will never send you an SMS asking you to provide or update details without being logged in securely to your Opal account to do so. Please don’t click on the link.”
The text in question claims the recipient has failed to ‘tap off’ on one of their trips and provides a link that will provide “more info”.
“Our system record shows that you have one trip failed to tap-off. Please pay this outstanding invoice immediately,” the scam text reads.
Failing to tap off using an Opal card would not result in an unpaid-invoice notification, Transport NSW said.
“If you forget to tap on or to tap off with the same card or device: you will be charged the default fare for an incomplete trip, which is the maximum possible fare for that service, based on your Opal card type,” Transport NSW says on its website.
Text message scams were the most-reported scam type last year, Scamwatch reported. In 2022, more than $28.5 million was lost to text-message scams, from close to 80,000 reports.
NSW residents also lost the most amount of money to scams last year, coming in at more than $155 million, with around 79,000 reports.
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