GRAEME GOODINGS:
Hardly a day goes by that we’re not assailed by scam texts on our phones. You hear a little tinkle, tinkle notification, and there it is. Most are pretty obvious, but there are those that are more sophisticated and people, sadly, are getting caught. Well, now the government is moving to require telcos to block or flag scam texts. A new register to prevent fraudsters from using trusted business names to dupe Australians. Let’s find out more about it from Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones. Stephen, good morning. Thanks for being with us.
STEPHEN JONES:
Graeme, good to be back.
GOODINGS:
Every one of us gets these texts. I’ve had one or 2 this morning myself. What can you do to stop them or at least slow them up?
JONES:
The ones that are the biggest problems, the ones that are impersonating a bank or a government agency or a utility provider, your listeners would have had them telling them – I know you don’t have toll roads down there, but your listeners would have had toll road texts pretending to, from the toll company, saying they’ve got a – they’re easy to detect, but if it’s from your bank, if it’s from a government agency, if it’s from the Australia Post or others, then they’re harder. The new system all businesses will be required. So, all those trusted brand name, they’ll have a number and what we call an alpha tag, which is essentially the name that appears when you get an SMS from their business. They’ll be on the register. If one of these criminal gangs are trying to send messages and it doesn’t match the number, doesn’t match with the name on the register, then it’ll be blocked. And we anticipate millions of these messages will be blocked as a result of that. It’s another step in uplifting our capacity to keep Australians safer from scammers.
GOODINGS:
So, there’s nothing effectively we have to do, you know, when we just won’t be getting these scam texts.
JONES:
No, there’ll be much fewer of them coming through. I won’t give the rock‑solid guarantee you won’t get any because some will get through. But the ones that impersonate a bank by having, you know, let’s just say ANZ or Commonwealth Bank or HSBC or another bank in the SMS header, in the, in the identifier and to the one where a name flashes up instead of a number. So, those ones will be blocked. If they’re coming from one of those trusted brands, you don’t have to do anything. Your listeners won’t have to do anything. It’ll take us about 6 months to stand this capacity up. So, it’ll be up and running by about mid next year. But we’re sending a clear message to the phone companies that they’ve got to do more to keep their customers safe.
GOODINGS:
So, I’m just trying to work out how this actually works. Is it that the Westpac or ANZ or whatever, they have to have a specific ID and therefore they were the only ones that would know it?
JONES:
That’s right. So, their name and their numbers, the numbers that they use that are associated with particular names will be registered with the SMS registry and the phone companies will be required to have a system that checks both the identity and the number to ensure they match before a message is going through their pipe. So, it’s a filtering system, if you like, to ensure that those criminals who are impersonating one of those big brand name banks or government agencies, their text messages get filtered out.
GOODINGS:
I mean, these scammers are very resourceful. I mean, their methods were very unsophisticated a few years ago. They’re getting more sophisticated all the time. So, with technology, we just need to try and keep one step ahead.
JONES:
And that’s exactly what the government’s program is all about. We stood up a National Anti‑Scam Centre about 12 months ago. Some good news for your listeners, as a result of the things we’ve done already, we’ve seen a 40 per cent reduction in scam losses in the last 12 months. I can guarantee you there’s not another country in the world that can say that in most their scam losses are going up. No one is reporting a 40 per cent reduction. And that’s because we’re doing, as I say, putting the National Anti‑Scam Centre in place and [inaudible] with the telecommunications companies to block known numbers and to block scam text messages coming through. We’ll have more codes of practice in place next year for banks and the social media platforms as well, to ensure that they’re keeping their system safe and their customers secure. So, it’s a whole of government, whole of economy effort that’s going on here. We want to reduce those numbers again so that when next we talk at this time next year – if we’re talking this time next year, I can say we’ve had another year where losses have reduced significantly again.
GOODINGS:
I see the government has included a promise to legislate compensation to customers and fines in fact, if banks and social media companies don’t protect their customers.
JONES:
Well, they’ve got to do the right thing. We keep our moneys with the bank and we assume that they’re going to put systems in place to keep our money safe. We’ll set high standards of the banks and if they don’t meet those standards, then yes, there’ll be fines and compensation that could flow from that. But we’ll also be setting these standards on social media platforms who are a significant source of the scams. People seeing ads on their social media feed from criminals pretending to sell everything from financial products to dodgy cars. They’re a major source of publishing this criminal activity and we’ve got to crack down on it and crack down hard. So, the obligations will be on them as well to do things like verify their advertisers and to remove criminal content that is posted on their network. Because where we are at the moment is just not good enough. Australians are falling victim because these businesses aren’t doing the right thing.
GOODINGS:
It’s a great step in the right direction, but I think it’d be fair to say that the government can do that and instrumentalities can take steps. But we, the public, still need to be ever vigilant.
JONES:
I can’t agree more. Nothing replaces the need for individual responsibilities. You know the tips that I give – don’t press those bloody blue links in your SMS messages. Just don’t press them, okay? That’s how scammers get you to a fake website. It’s just like sticking a seat belt on when you get in a car. It’s just a safety technique. It doesn’t mean a crash won’t happen, but you’ll be safer if it does. Don’t press the blue links. Don’t give your login details out to anyone. Just don’t do it. And don’t give your personal details out if somebody if there’s an unsolicited call that comes out to you, certainly don’t respond to somebody who’s trying to get you to transfer funds while they’re talking to you on a phone. There’s about a 99.999 per cent chance that that person’s a scammer. So, we just can’t be doing these unsafe activities. So, we’ve got some things to do as individuals. Business and government have got some things they’ve got to do as well.
GOODINGS:
Assistant Treasurer, thanks for your time today.
JONES:
Always good to talk.