By Callum Ludwig
The Rotary Club of Wandin is hosting a community cybersecurity seminar for locals to steel themselves against scams and suspicious activity online.
A 40-minute presentation will be run by Jackie Butler from the Wandin-Seville Community Bank with information supplied by the Bendigo Bank Head Office, offering helpful insight into avoiding nefarious activity on the internet.
Wandin Rotary’s Community Service Committee Chairman Gavan McIntyre said it’s not high-end stuff, just basic things that people might not be aware of.
“We want to highlight certain things that often happen to help them avoid getting scammed, because there’s so much of it going on at the moment, it’s pretty horrific out there,” he said.
“Hopefully we can help a few people with it but even if we only save one person from getting scammed, it’s been a success.”
As well as scams delivered to personal phone numbers or emails, Facebook has recently had scams become more prominent, with posts on community groups often appealing to users through posts of sad stories such as a missing pet and including nasty links or by Facebook Marketplace users asking to do a bank account transaction and asking for account details.
Mr McIntyre said it will hopefully help people pick out scam phone calls, emails, texts and posts.
“The issue was brought up at a meeting of the community committee and there are a couple of members in the club that have been scammed in the last few months as well,” he said.
“For Rotary, this is just another way of broadening our assistance and helping the general public, helping our local community. It doesn’t matter how far they come from, they’ll all be welcome. And if it fills up and we can’t fit, we will host another one.”
The seminar is free and will be held at the Wandin Community Hub at 7.30pm on Wednesday 19 April.
