A cyber awareness movement for rural, remote and indigenous Australia.
Privacy and cyber security in plain English. We drive out, set up in your town, and stay a few days. Not a hit and run.
The full site is on its way. What's here now is true, short, and enough to get started.
Ring your bank straight away, then IDCARE on 1800 595 160, then Scamwatch. If you've been caught, you're not the fool — the system is built to catch good people. The wallet card.
Your digital self is yours — your photos, your conversations, your records. Out here we look after our own. Same goes for your data.
Personal, not a hit and run.
Cyber Bushies is an awareness movement: programs about privacy and cyber security for rural, remote and indigenous communities. Advocate and educator — not an activist, not a lobbyist.
The whole idea is that it's personal. We drive out there, set up in the town, and spend three or four days with the people — the sessions, and the time around them. Simple things that work, for people with a property to run and no time for jargon.
Complex solutions are somebody else's job. Ours is to make sure you understand what's hitting people out here and the few things that keep you ahead of it.
Real help, not fear.
Plenty of websites will tell you to "stay vigilant." We'd rather show you the actual thing hitting people out here, and the five minutes it takes to stay ahead of it.
The scams that actually target the bush. Not phishing in the abstract — the specific ones. Fake buyers on Marketplace for cattle and machinery. Invoice fraud slipped into a hay, fuel or agronomy bill. Drought-relief and grant scams. Phone-banking scams hitting people whose branch closed, so they bank by phone now. A city awareness site can't write this — it doesn't know the saleyards exist.
- Check a link before you tap it. Long-press or hover to see where it really goes. If it's not the address you'd expect, don't touch it.
- Turn on two-factor (2FA) for your bank and email. It's the single biggest thing you can do, and it takes about five minutes.
- Verify the caller. Your bank will never rush you or ask for a code. Hang up and ring the number on your card — not the one they gave you.
- Slow the deal down. A buyer who won't inspect the cattle, or wants an odd payment method and to "sort the rest later," is telling you something. The buyer check, one page.
- Know what to do after. If you've been caught, you're not the fool — the system is built to catch good people. Ring your bank straight away, then IDCARE (1800 595 160) and Scamwatch. You don't have to drive to a branch to start. The wallet card.
Four plain-English posts so far on who actually has to protect your data, and why "out here" doesn't mean "safe". Read the blog.
First stop: South West Queensland, this autumn.
Cyber Bushies is built to be face to face, so it starts in a room, in a town in South West Queensland. The first session is being planned now: a plain-English session on the scams doing the rounds and the simple things that keep you ahead of them.
Want it to be your town, or the community you look after? Get in touch — that's how the map gets drawn.
Built by someone who lives here.
I'm Brian Colyer. I live on the Western Downs — the country Cyber Bushies is for. I'm not a consultant flying in from the city to explain a place I've never lived in.
A background in cyber security, and one plain aim: help people out here understand and keep their digital selves. One conversation, one town at a time. A handshake, not thirty pages of fine print.
That's Porter beside me — my assistance dog, and the steadiest colleague I've got.
— Brian Colyer