​Centrelink Has Been Stalking Your Facebook, Australia

Centrelink, the only place with a longer line out front than that new bar that just opened. Turns out the agency has been combing your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram—looking to weed out people wrongfully claiming benefits. And they've been doing it for a while. Set up in August 2015, Taskforce Integrity has uncovered more than $2 million in fraud, as the Daily Telegraph is reporting.

How are they doing it? Well, the Department of Human services caught out one couple who'd been claiming payments as separate singles after they posted a photo on Twitter of themselves together, and expecting baby. Centrelink is also keeping track of your online shopping with $1.7 million in fraud discovered by monitoring eBay. Turns out the $11.26 you got for that top your thought would sell for way more has to be included as part of your income.

The eerily titled Minister for Human Services Stuart Robert announced the taskforce has so far lead to five arrests, while revealed nearly 2000 cases where Centrelink paid too much money. It seems like big numbers but really is just a dent in the $3 billion the department estimates it has overpaid to welfare recipients.

However you feel about Taskforce Integrity it's actually less creepy than Centrelink's previous attempt to clamp down on fraud—hiring private investigators to catch welfare fraudsters. Between 2010-14, the agency launched 1,126 "operations" targeting individuals suspected of cheating the system.

There's a simple lesson to take away from all of this: Don't try and steal money from the government. Or, you know, just put your Facebook on private.