Two weeks back I travelled through Sydney in the Westconnex Tunnel ( a major improvement ) to Newcastle. Two days after the trip I get a text message saying I have a toll to pay which looked very authentic. I thought great I can pay it and clicked on the link entered my card details and they wouldn't accept my card. They actually advised what cards to use. Anyway I decided to click on the contact us button and these did not work at all ( red flag ).

Today I decided to ring the number that texted me and it immediately came up as suspected Fraud.
So I actually Contacted Westconnex Linkt and was advised that they know about this scam.
My question is how did the scammers know I used that tunnel. They must have logged into the Westconnex system and how did they link my mobile number to that tunnel.
Im not majorly concerned as my cards Security number changes on a daily basis and I hardly keep any money in it . I may change my card anyway as its a digital card and is easy to change.

Its just a warning to you guys so you don't get caught. It did look legitimate!

I've heard of this scam. Anything that asks you to pay by clicking on a link should be regarded as suspicious.

Now that you have clicked the link you should clean your device because it's probably been infected with spyware which will tell them everything you do on it.

A quick question - did you really use WestConnex M4/M8 or NorthConnex (between the M2/M7 and M1)? If you live in Canberra,it most likely would have been NorthConnex as this is the direct north-south link.

Regarding e-mail scams more broadly, most of them directly copy the HTML and CSS from a legitimate corporate e-mail to suck as many people in as possible. If I am not expecting an e-mail from a corprate entity I will not open it and will simply just discard it. Sometimes, most of the hyperlinks in a scam e-mail will be genuine and point back to the 'company's' website with only the "confirm your details' link being heavily disguised.

Sometimes a scam e-mail will unfortunately be well timed and in this case, this is probably how it has happened.

Tag operators are also not the villains that their behaviour once made them out to be. Laws have changed over the years. It was once common to be ripped for a big fine for evading a toll for example but this rarely happens now. A tag operator will also send numorous messages before they start to drop the hammer in a financial sense. Each one will contain a warning about escalating charges.

I am not sure about other tags but the one I have just bills me an extra 55c if the tag doesn't go off. The fee is for a real person to read the number plate and confirm the correct account is being charged. I don't get any e-mails for it and it is rare that happens anyway.

Brad I thought they called it west connex but it would have been north connex. I thought I saw different name signs from heading to Newcastle and heading to Canberra.

WestConnex is the big tunnel network between Concord, Rozelle, St Peters and Kingsgrove. The mainline tunnels which have also been dug will join all this together next year, I think, or maybe the year after.

UPDATE: Next year.

Well I can tell you the north connex is amazing. The whole drive from canberra to Taree ( via Newcastle ) was actually very relaxed.
Yeah it was the M2, M7 and M1

I am suspicious of all emails these days and I never click on a link until I see where it leads by hovering the mouse over it.

With my email app I can easily examine the headers of any messages I receive and I can see if the various address fields therein match up with the alleged sender.

Spam emails seem to be on the increase lately and a lot of them have an unsubscribe link which, if clicked on, leads you to what purports to be an unsubscribe form but is really a ruse to confirm that your email address is valid and then stand by for even more spam!

In my experience, all of the above types of spam messages have one thing in common. The postmaster field contains amazonses.com ... Bezos' mission central for spammers.

https://aws.amazon.com/ses/

In Outlook, one was once able to right-click on an e-mail message and then click "View Headers" but for some obscure reason (probably only when Outlook became more secure than it once was) the function was shifted to the external e-mail window. That said, headers can be viewed in most applications but how to get there may be different for each one.

Actually yesterday must have been national spam day. Telephone got four from Mastercard & bankcard, then some other patently obvious bitch wanted me to alter my email settings as they were holding seven. This with me having words with Telstra over several fake bills all coming out of their Bigpond that they were supposed to be cleaning up.

Hard to tell if the email has been blocked here as a carrier pigeon would be faster. Gmail is.

Two 'phishing' spam messages today. Both winners.

One from "Billing Team "is addressed "Dear Costomer".

The other one telling me that my (non existent) Norton subscription payment has been debited to my credit card is from the imaginative email address "gdghdffhd3gmail.com"

My work phone just got one and its not ever been out of the office lol.

Since my details have been leaked to the dark web, I've received all kinds of spam.

Twice I've received confirmation that I purchased a bitcoin via Paypal. The first was $299, the 2nd $399. I wish it was for real, because despite the turmoil, a bitcoin is worth about $38,000 . Anyway, I don't have Paypal, so it's obviously a scam, and they say if you have any questions you should ring a Canberra landline. I googled that number and it's well known as being used by scammers pretending to be the ATO and threatening to throw you in prison if you don't pay up.

What I don't understand, why the authorities haven't got the address of that phone, and paid them a visit.