TOM ELLIOTT:
All right. Scams. A relative of mine was scammed out of $400 just this week. It involved an email that purported to be from a friend but it was fake, and it urged my relative to go and buy an online Apple gift card for $400 and send it for some medical issue, and unfortunately she got taken in by it and is now $400 poorer. Our next guest is the Assistant federal Treasurer, and he’s the Financial Services Minister. Stephen Jones, good morning.
STEPHEN JONES:
Good morning, Tom, good to be with you.
TOM ELLIOTT:
Well, I mean scams are unfortunately a fact of life, a very unfortunate fact of life. What are you proposing to do about it?
JONES:
Well, we need to have a significant uplift in the protections across our economy. Yes, individual consumers have got a responsibility, but the industrialisation of scams through international crime gangs, the use of AI technology and the sophistication that is now applied means that we need a big uplift, and business has got to be a part of it, particularly the key businesses within the scams ecosystem, so it’s social media companies and telecommunications companies, which are the way that scams reach their victims, and it’s the bank which is the wallet or the pot of money at the end of it. And having all of those 3 lift their standards is a key part of what needs to be done to keep Australians safe.
ELLIOTT:
So have you had conversations with the like of Meta, which, you know, runs Facebook, and Telstra about this?
JONES:
We’re in consultations with all of the businesses across the ecosystem that are going to be impacted by this. Most of them agree that they need to do more to improve the protections on their system, and that’s what this law is aimed at doing, significant uplift in the protections, the prevention, the detection and the disruption and the reporting of scams. You know, a lot of people lose money because of scammers moving through the economy and so nobody can alert other people, nobody can put defences in place to stop or to block that stuff, so reporting’s key, but also the disruption and the prevention stuff, absolutely key in all of this.
ELLIOTT:
But do you want – let’s say people are scammed, like this relative of mine who got scammed out of $400 the other day, do you want the cost of that to go on to the likes of Telstra or maybe their email provider, or is it more that the email provider, like Telstra, has to do a better job of trying to block these emails, or what?
JONES:
[Indistinct] these laws is put in place [indistinct].
ELLIOTT:
Sorry, Mr Jones, we might just call you back, because that line’s not clear at all. I do want to continue this in a moment. Stephen Jones there. We’ll get a clearer line in a moment. Angelo, good morning.
SPEAKER:
Good morning, how are you?
ELLIOTT:
Yeah, good, Angelo.
SPEAKER:
I just jumped in my car and heard the conversation about scamming and scams, and I – it was quite interesting, because I rang up my electricity company to get a better deal, and they were happy to do a little bit of a better deal for me, they told me I had to go on a new plan, and then I agreed to it, and they said to me they need my driver’s licence or passport, and I said to them, ‘You’ve got all my details’, I’ve been with them for years, never missed a bill.
ELLIOTT:
So do you think it was a scam, or do you just think they’ve upgraded the amount of ID they need?
SPEAKER:
No, it wasn’t a scam, because I actually rang them up, and I just – I just don’t like – and I mentioned to them that I’ve had my identity stolen, so I was really uncomfortable giving that sort of information knowing that out there, you know, big businesses getting targeted, and –
ELLIOTT:
Yeah. Angelo, sorry, keep listening. We’ve got the Assistant Treasurer, Stephen Jones, back on the line. Mr Jones, are you there?
JONES:
Yes, I am Tom.
ELLIOTT:
That’s better. So I think the question I asked you before was, okay, so my relative’s been scammed, which she has, out of 400 bucks.
JONES:
Yeah.
ELLIOTT:
In the future under this new framework, is the idea that if the emails come via her Telstra email service that Telstra has to refund her –
JONES:
No.
ELLIOTT:
– or is it just that Telstra has to do a better job of stopping these sorts of malicious emails getting to her in the first place, or what?
JONES:
Yeah, absolutely. So a much bigger uplift from both telecommunications companies in filtering out the scam material. So we’ll have – we’re going to establish what we call a register, and you won’t be able to send out a bulk SMS and pretend to be a bank or a government agency or a telecommunications company, because if your name’s not on the – if your name and number isn’t on the register and you’re trying to spoof a message into Australia pretending to be one of these organisations, it will be blocked. That will be an example of one of the obligations –
ELLIOTT:
Isn’t the problem though always going to be that because of the financial rewards that accrue to criminals from scams that the scammers will always find – or be a step ahead of, you know, the anti‑scam technology, or the anti‑scam measures, that we’ll be constantly chasing our tail to keep up with, you know, what AI is doing or what criminals are doing online?
JONES:
Look, we know [indistinct] we’re always going to be tracing them, but there’s a whole bunch of things we can doing right now which will significantly uplift our protections that aren’t in place or aren’t in place uniformly across the system. So confirmation of payee, this is when you type in a number in your banking app – some banks do it, some banks don’t – so you know the name of the person you’re sending money to.
ELLIOTT:
Yeah.
JONES:
That’s just one simple example. Social media platforms confirming the identity of the advertiser. Somebody pretending to be a bank or an investment adviser, but they’re not, they’re posting fake investment sites up on social media platforms, confirming the identity of the advertiser before you let them post an ad on a social media platform. It doesn’t happen now, would lead to a significant uplift in the protections. So these are just a couple of examples of things that we can do –
ELLIOTT:
Yeah.
JONES:
– and will be required under our new laws.
ELLIOTT:
‘Cause there is like what’s called a deep fake, ‘cause they use lots of pictures, but bits of video clips of well‑known personalities, like financial ones like Alan Kohler, David Koch, and they pretend to be talking about, you know, some sort of money‑making software you can download on your phone. Now obviously it’s fake, but I get people sending me emails saying, ‘Hey, have you done this, could you check it out, it looks really interesting’. And I mean people unfortunately are a bit gullible about this. Also, what about identity theft? I mean it’s very hard to buy anything online these days without giving them your email address, your mobile phone number, your home address, if it’s something that has to be posted, and then these companies themselves don’t have good protections, and all those details end up out on the web. You know, would you have a regime where companies have to do more to keep customer details secure?
JONES:
Yes, we do, and we’ve introduced laws into place in parliament yesterday actually, which will require significant uplift in privacy protections and requirements on businesses who are keeping your personal data. Can I just take that example you used, Twiggy Forrest is in a court in the US at the moment because his identity has been stolen and in fake videos floating around Facebook about him, you know, promoting [indistinct] ever heard of. A really good example of what our laws will change. Twiggy complained to Facebook time and time and time again and they never pulled down the ads and never blocked the ads. Under our laws there will be a legal requirement on them to pull this material and pull it down immediately the day it has been identified. So, a couple of examples, where, yeah, this is, you know, very inventive, but there’s a bunch of stuff that we can do which will lead to a significant uplift, and we’re going to do it.
ELLIOTT:
And finally, would you consider maybe an education campaign for consumers just to try and say, this is how scams might work? I mean, I don’t know if you know, there’s a movie, I just read about it this morning, out called ‘Thelma’, and it’s about an elderly woman in America who is the victim of scammers, and she teams up with her grandson who’s in his 20s and they go after the scammers. I’m not saying people do that, but I mean it happens enough that they’re now making movies about it. Would you consider a public education campaign?
JONES:
I think it’s a good idea, Tom, and I think we do, I think we need to do that, and we need to ensure that we’re using all avenues available. You know, I, myself, have spoken to literally thousands of Australians, I do community forums just about every week on this stuff, but yep, using paid advertising needs to be a part of it as well, and yes, we should do that.
ELLIOTT:
All right. Thank you for your time. Stephen Jones here, Assistant federal Treasurer and Financial Services Minister.