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 many scammers will hope to take advantage of the increased business activity.

For the latest Cooking the Books podcast I talked to Bronwyn Groot, fraud education manager at the Commission for Financial Capability.

We discussed the numbers of scammers out there, what type of scams are going around, and the red flags to watch out for.

If you have a question about this podcast, or question you'd like answered in the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookJournalist/ Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/francescooknz/ and Twitter here https://twitter.com/FrancesCook