Department of Human Services and Roll Out Letters

Department of Human Services and Roll Out Letters

<  Back to News and Media

Published on:

February 19, 2019

670,000 Australians are collectively owed $110 million in unclaimed Medicare rebates from the Department of Human Services (DHS). Medicare is sending correspondence to those individuals who did not provide their bank account details to DHS and have thus missed out on rebates for doctors visits and other service fees. If you are entitled to reimbursement, you will be contacted via your online myGov account or by post.

Roll outs such as these unfortunately get the attention of criminals who try to interfere with the process by stealing the identity of unwitting individuals.

There are three main ways in which criminals can interfere with this reimbursement:

  1. Letterbox theft where criminals steal the reimbursement letters from the mailbox as a form of identity theft or to attempt to claim reimbursement on your behalf.  
  2. ‘Phishing’ phone calls from scammers pretending to be from DHS/Medicare/myGov
  3. 'Phishing’ text/email messages which may contain phony links where individuals may be asked to ‘update their personal details and bank account information’. Examples of this type of scam may be found on the DHS website on the "Have you been scammed page".

IDCARE recommends the following:

  • Ensure your letterbox is locked or secured
  • Check your letterbox daily
  • Do not click on links or respond to text messages, emails or phone calls from people stating they are DHS or Medicare.  Instead login to your myGov account or call by sourcing the relevant phone number from the official DHS website.

If you wish to contact the Medicare regarding this matter please call 132 011.

For more information on Medicare reimbursement please click on the below links.

For more information on credentials and identity theft please have a look at the below IDCARE Fact Sheets.

Other News

IDCARE is always active in the media from radio to TV, social media and news articles. Keep up to date with what's happening at IDCARE and in the media.
How easy is your password to hack?

This one takes less than a second and yet its featured over 23 million times

Read more...
How Bad Is It Really If You Click On That Link?

And what our client told the Minister for Defence, Peter Dutton.

Read more...
iappANZ Annual Summit – Melbourne 2018

Australian Information and Privacy Commissioner discusses latest quarterly report on the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme.

Read more...

CONTACT US

IDCARE is here to provide you with specialist support and guidance when faced with a cyber and identity related issue. Contact one of our Identity & Cyber Security Case Managers to learn more about our Support Services and how we can help you.   

Get help
ONLINE FORM

Submit a web request

Call Centre Icon

Call our AUSTRALIAn
NATIONAL CASE MANAGEMENT CENTRE

1800 595 160

Mon - Fri: 8am - 5pm AEST

QLD: 07 3555 5900
ACT & NSW: 02 8999 3356
VIC: 03 7018 2366
NT, SA & WA08 7078 7741

Call Centre Icon

call our NEW ZEALAND
NATIONAL CASE MANAGEMENT CENTRE

0800 121 068

Mon - Fri: 10am - 7pm NZST

AKL: 09 884 4440