Jesse Mullighan (00:00):
RN Z International Time for Tech Tuesday, once a fortnight, we're joined by Dan Watson from Vertek It Services with his thoughts on an area of technology or information or sometimes volunteer firefighting. Hi Dan.
Daniel Watson (00:13):
Hey. Good day, Jesse.
Jesse Mullighan (00:15):
Big TV star now.
Daniel Watson (00:17):
Oh yeah.
Jesse Mullighan (00:18):
Don't forget where you were discovered. Don't forget where it all began here in afternoons and Tech Tuesday you've been on Nigel. That is a scam show though.
Daniel Watson (00:28):
Yeah, mate. That, that was, that was an experience getting a peek behind the curtain.
Jesse Mullighan (00:32):
Yeah. Tell me, tell me about the filming. First of all, did they did you get plenty of makeup on, make you look pretty, get the lighting right? All that sort of stuff.
Daniel Watson (00:40):
What? No.
Jesse Mullighan (00:41):
Was there, was there food? Were there snacks? Was there a craft services table?
Daniel Watson (00:46):
I did provide a few beers.
Jesse Mullighan (00:48):
<Laugh> well you, you, you provided hospitality for them, how it works. No, you're meant to be you meant to be benefiting from the deep pockets of TV NZ mate. Not put, not buying your own bs.
Daniel Watson (01:00):
Clearly I need to join the union and get some things sorted out.
Jesse Mullighan (01:03):
<Laugh>, did you enjoy the experience though?
Daniel Watson (01:06):
I did. It was, it was actually quite fascinating. I appreciate I have a greater appreciation for the amount of work that goes onto TV shows. It, it, there there is a fair amount of repetition in making sure that they're at the right angles and you got everything that's so they can do cuts and lingo that I still don't understand. But it, it, it was, they were a great bunch of guys to work with.
Jesse Mullighan (01:28):
That's why I tend to do live tv. Cause they can only ask you to do it once. <Laugh>
Daniel Watson (01:35):
Improves your dollar per hour rate. Rate. Right.
Jesse Mullighan (01:38):
Yeah. Hey, w well I haven't got to it, I'm sure, I promise I will on demand. But what was your topic of expertise?
Daniel Watson (01:44):
So I got tapped for two segments. One was on the episode two and on investment scams. And the other one was on invoice scams in episode three
Jesse Mullighan (01:57):
W Well, tell me what you told them and then what was left on the editing floor? Cause that's usually quite a bit.
Daniel Watson (02:03):
Yes. Quite a load for the investment scams. I had a couple of phone calls with the, the scammer where he was talked to me about the, the various financial instruments. I was left at the, like sitting down when we like, hey, like now we're gonna arrange for this call with a scam with Nigel Ladder and, and that kinda stuff. And, and I had a last minute freak out. Yeah. <laugh>, like I, I hadn't actually searched out whether the guy had LinkedIn profile before and then I did, and I was kind of expecting to see a lack of congruity, you know, like what that person said about themselves and what was on the profile and everything matched. And I was like, oh, oh, oh, is this guy actually legit? Right. And then like, but I'd already gone through and done the work. I knew, I actually intellectually knew that it was all a scam. Yeah. But the guy's so good and like, there's so many things that look just right. Yeah. That I was left going. I don't, oh, either I might made him, oh, I better check this again and then just reconvince myself. Yeah, absolutely. Yes.
Jesse Mullighan (03:03):
Second guessing yourself that, and, and man, if it if it's confusing you, what chance do the rest of us have?
Daniel Watson (03:09):
Yeah. That was, that was one of the thing, and, and part of the advice, like the banking ouds advice during the show is spot on. But again, that I think part of that might have been limited by the time available by the format mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, because it was kind of put across that if you get a call outta the blue with regards to an investment scan, then you know that's not how it's necessarily gonna work all the time. Oh yeah. Because immediately if you get somebody who's contacting outta the blue, you're gonna be on your, on your edge checking this out. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Cause people hate salespeople. Right. it's more
Jesse Mullighan (03:37):
Likely to be my friend Dan who calls me up and says, yes, I just got into something really good. You should get in as well.
Daniel Watson (03:44):
That could be it. It's, it could be your mate who's trying to hook you up with like a really good deal. Which is, I was dealing with this woman out of Aussie who lost a huge amount of money and part of that she showed me like the email chain going back and back right to the beginning. And it was one of her mates who had Yeah. Done like a, an email broadcast email out to few, like three or four of his mates where you know, Hey, I invested 12 K and now I've got 30 k might count, check it out for yourself. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And that was the lead in. So that was one way. The other thing that I saw, which was I, I dunno if they really covered it, was how some of these people are getting scammed is you are going hunting.
(04:22):
Like say you're, you're, you're getting towards retirement age, right. So you might have a whole bunch of life savings Yeah. In stocks and bonds, investments, whatever. Yep. And some of them might be more risky. Right. And you're thinking, okay, it's time to shift my investment profile down. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, I'll be a little bit canning about it. Do some gurgling, do some reading up. One of the, one of the big search terms was compare fixed term deposit rates nz and then when you search that up, quite often one of the top four Google ads that's gonna be in there is a scammer site. Right. And that scammer site, the sole purpose is to get you to give them your contact details. Oh. So they can get a highly convincing, well-trained person with the right kind of accent and the, the whole story to, to get on the phone with you and do the rest of the convincing.
(05:10):
Wow. And cuz you've gone out there looking, being smart. I'm doing my research. There was actually a woman on the, on the episode too who pretty much, this is kind of how she got into it. But that, that's the thing is that the, the advice was kind of limited. You, you do need to be aware. Full stop. You, you need, I spoke to my investment advisor shout out to Simon Angelo of the Vista Portfolio Vista Folio. He, he, he basically says, look, what you need to do is make sure you are aware of who the custodian of your capital is at all times. They should be a registered financial advisor. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, you know, know, recognized by the FMA in New Zealand. In New Zealand. Don't go outside of your jurisdiction because once it's outside of your jurisdiction, it's viewed for you to even get your money back. Because if they're inside New Zealand, you know, they've got some certain protections there. Like, you know, you don't get your money back if the investment itself fails. But if they were to fail whilst you had your money and trust with them before it got invested, then you know, you got, you got options there.
Jesse Mullighan (06:14):
I'm looking at that website you mentioned, by the way, cause I googled what you told me to Google and I found a website and it looks pretty flash. There's a bit of random capitalizations of words like banks. But apart from that, there's no information apart from just a, a form for me to fill out with my name, email and phone number I ideal investment amounts and read it. No. Then, then I submit my request and I guess, I guess some friendly person rings me back and with some great suggestions of what I could do with my money.
Daniel Watson (06:41):
Yeah. Don't submit to those websites <laugh>. Please do not, don't go there.
Jesse Mullighan (06:47):
Oh
Daniel Watson (06:47):
Man. And Google it and have, have some amusement but don't even engage with them. They're really good. It, it's, it's organized crime at at a significant level. It it's really, it's so effective. Yeah. So and, and they're in every jurisdiction you can, you can Google that fixed term deposit, compare fixed food deposit rates, Australia you know, Canada, UK us It's, it's big. And they'll be raking in billions. Yeah. Anyway, gosh. Anyway, that was, that was episode two in episode three. Attempted an invoice scam against my accountant and <laugh> it didn't work. You know, cuz part of what you don't know is that about six months ago they actually did have have a, an email scam issue which got them on their edge. Yeah,
Jesse Mullighan (07:31):
Yeah. Tightened everything up.
Daniel Watson (07:34):
Oh, they certainly are tightened now. And I thought that was actually quite good because they did all the right things, you know, and, and
Jesse Mullighan (07:40):
Could you just run us down, we've only got a couple of minutes, can run us down on what an invoice scam is.
Daniel Watson (07:45):
Okay. So the, the idea is you, you're sending invoices to companies in hope that they'll pay you mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, right? I mean, you don't have to provide new services. So the, the gross margins are fantastic. <Laugh>
Jesse Mullighan (07:58):
And am I pretending to be, you know
Daniel Watson (08:02):
Spark, there was, there was a dude, the biggest invoice scams was in like 2015. And then one dude pretended he was a, a hardware supplier to Google and, and got like a hundred million dollars. So once, once he, once you get, once you get inside the accounting system as a supplier, then you're good to go. Now that was mostly what it looks like is a combination of business email compromise where they're spoofing your suppliers domain perhaps mm-hmm. <Affirmative> to say, hey, it's, it's us from widget sors.com. Yeah. except you don't notice that the, the s on the end is actually a five, right? Yeah. And they, your normal supplier and then they get involved in the conversation and if they can compromise your email system as well, then they can kind of, they get doubly more effective because then they can make sure that any email's going to your actual supplier don't, don't
Jesse Mullighan (08:57):
Make it.
Daniel Watson (08:58):
Oh gosh. Right. So
Jesse Mullighan (09:00):
You, so what's the top line advice
Daniel Watson (09:02):
Then, Dan sending the invoice for that one? I, I'd most people already have pretty good spam and inbound filters for malware for their companies and for their, for their businesses. And that's not so much of a problem cuz spam is not gonna pick out a legitimate email account that's been set up to try and fool you because it will be a legit email account. It's just gonna be a slightly wrong domain name. Or they're gonna pretend that they are your domain to your, your customers and suppliers and try and get involved in the, in the trans commercial transaction. So there are things, there's, there's additional protocols which have been put in place and that the, it's the uptake at the moment is quite low, but what it does is it, it it specifies to all internet mail servers out there, which are the absolutely only legitimate mail servers that send email from your domain.
(10:02):
So cuz the email protocol that the world runs on is very open, archaic and has had 40 years of retrofitting technologies on top of, but the underlying system is like, is very easy just to say I am Jesse Mulligan at Radio nz. Right. And unless you've got some additional protections built into your domain name system to state, okay these three servers are legitimate centers for the radio NZ domain. Yeah. and if that's, if you get email that pretends it's coming from Radio New Zealand and it doesn't come from one of these things, reject it. Okay. Quarantine.
Jesse Mullighan (10:39):
Well can I just clarify though that the people I've emailed from R NZ today asking for money, that is actually me. I'm really desperate. So please get back to me. <Laugh>. Thank you. Daniel
Daniel Watson (10:50):
Rock on Dan
Jesse Mullighan (10:51):
Watson from Vertek IT Services. Know how to be on Shortland Street next Tech Tuesday and really appreciate the advice. Cheers.