NZTA Relicensing spam email - it's a Phishing Scam, DO NOT CLICK ON ITS LINK

Dave Neighbourly Lead from Kelvin Grove

Today I received another fake email, pretending to be an NZTA vehicle relicensing reminder. It's not the first. The online scammers are out in force as usual, and little old NZ is on their radar, we are not immune and we get scams targeted directly to NZers using fake emails and fake websites to try to steal your drivers license number and bank details.

I'm an IT guy so I am always on high alert for this stuff, but these fake emails are often copied directly from real ones with a few specific changes in the hidden links, and could easily fool members of the public, especially elderly people unfamiliar with the tricks the scammers use.
I have reported the email to NZTA, and reported the source of the spam via www.spamcop.net... (a great way of fighting back against the scammers)

Please warn your family and friends to *** NEVER click on a link from inside an email *** e.g. one that says you need to log in and pay something, or claims you need to login in to read an official letter, or to confirm your details.
Even clicking the link in the email is enough to let the scammers know that your email address is valid and answered by a real person, so they will continue to spam you in future hoping to catch you out.

Instead, even if you think it is a genuine email, you are always better to manually type in the real website address (eg nzta.govt.nz) into your web browser yourself, rather than risk using a dangerous fake link from a received email (which is *almost always* a scam).

Stay Safe Everyone!

PS here's a safety hint that you or a knowledgeable friend can look at setting up in your email program - in the attached photo you'll see I have my email program set to NOT "automatically load remote images" in any emails received, and I click on a button if I want to see what the email is supposed to look like as written, with all the fancy graphics.
It also saves time by not loading the majority of the advertising graphics on mailing lists that I don't always want to read!

This step provides one more level of protection against accidentally loading doctored files from a fake website, and it helps deny the scammer an important piece of knowledge about your email address, because when embedded graphics in an email are loaded by your email program "trying to be helpful" to display it in full, it can indicate to the scammer's database that your email address is current and being used by a real person.