Scams have been getting a lot of air time in the media lately – and financial industry watchdogs like the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) are on alert, especially to social media scams.
We’ve replaced the advice of “don’t talk to strangers,” with “be careful what you click on”. It’s important to make sure you’re aware when you are interacting with financial services and ads online.
If you see something that sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Maybe it’s promising you romance in exchange for gifts, an unusually high rate of return on an investment, or an economic survey that comes from an unrecognisable URL. If you sniff a rat, it’s likely better to leave the ‘deal’ where it is and not take it any further.
Better yet, report it to Netsafe for online fraud and general scams or the FMA, who handle investment scam reporting in New Zealand.
Internet Natives Are Not Immune to Scams
There was a time when it was believed that only people who didn’t have as much experience on the Internet were being scammed online – and only more vulnerable people hit by in-person or phone call scams.
But that’s not true – and may never have been – a 2025 Consumer NZ found in a survey of 1200 New Zealanders found that 1 in 5 have been victim of a scam in their lifetime involving our bank accounts or financial services.
While they found that older people are more likely to be scammed, Consumer NZ’s research shows that 53% of the people scammed were under 50 years old at the time of the survey. It’s not only one demographic falling victim. We all need to take extra care online.
It’s also not your imagination that scams are becoming more frequent. The 2024 annual New Zealand Crime and Victim Survey also showed that fraud is on the rise, likely driven by online scams, with 10% of people surveyed significantly impacted in 2024, a stark growth from 5% in 2018.
AI is Making it Easier to Impersonate Financial Institutions
Not only are they more frequent, but these financial scams are also becoming more sophisticated. With the prevalence and accessibility of AI, scammers are able to impersonate people via deepfakes, or voice altering software, and recreate websites that look entirely legitimate at first glance.
enable.me Head Strategic Coach Katie Wesney shared in a Stuff article about being scammed by an online hoodie site that passed all the usual cursory checks, but ended up taking her money and providing no goods. She has some excellent tips about remaining vigilant to these sophisticated scams – sharing so it doesn’t happen to anyone else.
But how can you protect yourself and insulate your finances from potential fraudulence and scams?
Some Tips to Stay Savvy in the AI-drenched Internet of 2025:
While AI-enabled scams seem more realistic, they do often follow a pattern. There are some themes to these financial scams that once you’re aware of you can begin to spot:
- Unsolicited contact: through social media, email, or even a phone call.
- A sense of urgency: they will use tactics that make you feel like the deal will disappear soon. You may receive multiple emails, messages or phone calls in a short space of time.
- Personal information: they may request your private details, passwords, or financial information via email or message.
- Prizes or rewards: be wary of anyone saying you’ve ‘won’ something, especially if you never signed up to the giveaway or to win the prize.
A few things you can do if you think you’re looking at a scam:
- Carefully check the URL or email address it comes from. There might be one punctuation mark or letter difference that gives it away.
- Exit the website address, or ad, that you are on and look it up via a new search window. Is it the same? Does it have the same deal promised?
- Email or call the contact details on the website. Does anyone answer? Do they sound authentic?
- Check the FMA’s Warning and Alerts webpage. Is the offer you’ve got in front of you listed there?
- Report it to Netsafe or the FMA. They will investigate and publish results if it is a scam.
How to Know if It’s Really moneyfit.me
moneyfit.me is a financial education platform and workplace wellbeing brand, powered by financial coaching company enable.me. We lead with the moneyfit.me Tracker App and have a range of educational courses that work alongside it, developed by our in-house team.
We also have commercial partnerships with AdviceFirst and KiwiSaver provider AMP. Working as a group of companies, we have the financial expertise to support you holistically with your finances, from insurance through to money habits to KiwiSaver.
Any correspondence you receive from moneyfit.me will come from the URLs @moneyfit.me or @enable.me with no other variations.
If you are ever unsure if an advertisement, blog, email or website is truly us, you can contact us via feedback@moneyfit.me or check the information on our website moneyfit.me or our official Facebook and LinkedIn pages.
We also appreciate hearing from you if you notice anything suspicious that uses our name, website, or any of our people. Only by working together can we win against the scammers of the world.
“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.” – Edward Everett Hale
