Cooking The Books

Each week the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's how to protect yourself from the new coronavirus scammers. Hosted by Frances Cook.It's a somewhat depressing quirk of humanity that in times of crisis, while most of us are working together to get through it, on the sidelines the scammers are always lurking. It's happening again with Covid-19. Around the world coronavirus-themed scams are spiking up, numbering in their millions. Some claim they have a health business you can invest in. Some claim they're the government trying to trace you in case you had contact with an infected person, and can you just give them your credit card number for a processing fee. Some will even claim your bank is in trouble, and you need to urgently send them your details to rescue the funds in there. As always, they use fear and urgency to try to steal information and money. As we come out to a lower level of lockdown, it's more important than ever to stay alert, as