NADIA MITSOPOULOS:
Now, are you sick of receiving those text messages about a tax bill or the unpaid road toll bill, which is pretty funny given we don’t have tolls here in WA, or that your account has been hacked and includes a handy link to your bank? Well, the federal government will finally try to stop the flood of SMS scammers by developing a Sender ID Register of approved numbers attached to certain brands and businesses. Stephen Jones has more on this. He’s the federal Assistant Treasurer. Good morning, Minister.
STEPHEN JONES:
Hey, Nadia, good to be back with you.
MITSOPOULOS:
So, how will this work?
JONES:
Well, at the moment, here’s a fun fact. We’re blocking about a million calls and messages a day. And we’re doing this because we’ve got a blacklist of numbers that we know are being used by the criminals to target Australians. So, whenever we get tipped off about a number, somebody reports it to Scamwatch that goes on the blacklist. But it’s a game of whack‑a‑mole. So, we’ve been looking around the world at other approaches. In Singapore, they’ve moved to a whitelist approach where essentially, if you’re a bank, a government agency, one of these large famous brands that are often sending out texts, you’ve got to have your name and your number on a register and the name has got to match the number. And if somebody tries to send a text through using your name that doesn’t match the number on the register, it’ll be blocked. So, that’s in a nutshell, what we’re going to do. We’ll be keeping the blacklist, but we’ll also have a white list of numbers that will have to match up, otherwise they’re blocked. And that’s another way that we can assure that Australians are getting far fewer of these scam messages that are driving us all nuts and costing us millions and millions of dollars.
MITSOPOULOS:
And so what sort of businesses will have to go on that register and register their numbers?
JONES:
Yeah, the obvious ones: banks, government agencies. So, your listeners would have got the myGov text or the Australia Post text or the tax office text, those are obvious places. Financial institutions are other ones that we’ll obviously keep there. We’re going to the sources of where the greatest losses are, Nadia, and we’ll start there and we’ll expand it out over time. But the big loss is bank impersonation scams and government impersonation scams. So, that’s where we’ll start.
MITSOPOULOS:
And this is mandatory.
JONES:
It will be mandatory. It’ll take us, you’ll understand, your listeners will understand, it’ll take us a while to stand all of this up and to build the registry out. So, we’re looking at the second half of next year when it’ll be stood up. So, the blacklist will continue to operate. So, we’ll continue to be filtering out about a million or so SMSs and calls a day, but by mid next year we’ll have the other one stood up and we’ll be able to build that out to block more and more and more of this criminal content.
MITSOPOULOS:
Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones is my guest this morning at 5 to 9. And so would this then just keep expanding as the years go on and more and more businesses could become victims or, you know, have their identities assumed by a criminal?
JONES:
Yeah, that’s what we’re working towards, starting with the biggest part of the big problem. And we know that whenever we put in place these sorts of measures, they’ll try and get around it and try and move to something else. So, we’re doing it in a way which enables us to move to other messaging types and to other obviously institutions as we build this out and the vectors of criminal activity change.
MITSOPOULOS:
So, how quickly do you think we would see an impact with this measure?
JONES:
From about, in the second half of next year. I don’t want to over promise here it will take a while to build this registry up and get all the links in place, but by second half of next year it will be up and running and people will start to see the results and it’ll just get better over time. We’ll continue, as I say, with the blacklist and that’s the known numbers that have been prescribed that we know criminals are using. So, we’ll continue with that and by the second half of next year we’ll have this second phase in place.
MITSOPOULOS:
So, if the ANZ bank sends me a text, but that number does not match the number that the ANZ bank has registered with ACMA, I assume is the one looking at this, that that message will not come through to me.
JONES:
Spot on. Spot on, yeah. And if the phone companies let that message go through to you and you lose money as a result of it, then you know, significant fines and penalties can be applied as a result of that failure.
MITSOPOULOS:
So, it seems now the onus is going back on the telcos and the banks, for instance, when it comes to trying to stop scams, because it feels like for a lot of people over the last couple of years it’s been a little bit of victim blaming. Oh well, you should have opened your eyes up, you should have realised it’s a scam and it kind of felt a bit unfair.
JONES:
Yeah, that’s old thinking. And we know the sophistication behind some of this criminal activity is just getting more and more involved. So, there’s got to be a shared responsibility here. Individuals have still got to take care and don’t press the bloody blue links and don’t give your personal details out and you don’t transfer money online from an unsolicited phone call. All of that sort of those rules just, you know, they should. It’s like putting a seatbelt on when you get in a car. You should continue to do that. But, you know, we know that taking a whole of economy approach works. We released the last quarterly report of the National Anti‑Scam Centre, in the last week and what it’s shown is a 40 per cent reduction in scam losses through what we’ve put in place already. And we’ve got much more to come. There’s not another country in the world who’s seen those scam losses and we want to go further.
MITSOPOULOS:
And finally, Minister, can this be extended to emails?
JONES:
Obviously we’re going to have to look to other areas, so standing this up first, there’s different sorts of laws and different sorts of capacity in relation to emails and different providers, but we’re starting with the SMS messages and the phone calls because that’s where about half of the losses are stemming from.
MITSOPOULOS:
I’ll leave it there. Appreciate your time. Thank you.
JONES:
Good to be with you.