Medicare: You have been in close contact with someone who has Omicron. Please follow the link below to order your PCR kit…
WHEN I received this text last week, there was a microsecond of anxiety.
“Oh no, here we go again” was my first thought, swiftly followed by the realisation that Medicare could not possibly know who I’d been in contact with and wouldn’t be sending me a link to order a PCR kit even if they did.
With around a million new cases of COVID-19 a month across Australia, contact tracing in the general community is no longer even a possibility. It just isn’t happening anymore.
I pasted the text into a search engine and, sure enough, it was the latest in a long line of scams inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As this government site explains, the recent spate of messages are impersonating government agencies to steal personal and banking details and, ultimately, money.
It’s not hard to see why even savvy people might fall for…
