Mr. Luca had been receiving his pensions through Centrelink per fortnight, but in mid-July, he found out his MyGov account was breached by a fraudster. They changed his bank account number and his BSB number, then requested and obtained an advance of his age pension. This is despite him having a “very obscure” password and three secure verification questions.
Mr. Luca quickly reported the matter to Centrelink, Australia’s government welfare payment manager. After talking to staff, he gained a new insight: he was not the only one who had his account targeted by identity theft. The Centrelink staff told him she “personally already had another three clients who had had the similar thing happen with their payments.” “This means that there are likely to be thousands of people in a similar situation,” he told The Epoch Times.
Mr. Luca’s situation is still unresolved. Although he was able to recreate his MyGov account and managed to protect his pension payment from the fraudster, he still did not have online access to Centrelink. “And now the government is proposing putting all personal data in one place. This is a potential disaster—as things stand the fraudsters will just walk in and grab all the data they care to have,” he said.
In July, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher told the Australian Financial Review’s Government Services Summit that she expected the national digital identity model to be implemented in an “economy-wide system.” The system will bundle together a person’s driver’s licence, Medicare card, passport details, Centrelink details, and other credentials. The government will announce legislation related to the new digital identity platform in September.
The Epoch Times has confirmed with Centrelink that Mr. Luca’s account was indeed hacked while revealing a spike in identity theft activity over the past year. “There is a growing trend of scammers impersonating government organisations, including myGov and Services Australia, to try and steal myGov sign-in credentials and other personal information, such as bank details,” General Manager Hank Jongen said in an email response to The Epoch Times. Mr. Jongen assured that the myGov system “remains secure and has not been compromised. It’s an unfortunate reality that opportunistic scammers steal identity information to carry out fraudulent activities.”
“Services Australia takes the security of customer information very seriously and has robust protections in place,” he said. “We’ve extended an offer to contact the customer to ensure all appropriate steps have been taken to secure their accounts.”