Phone scams are stealing millions of dollars from Australian victims despite record attempts blocked

EXCLUSIVE AUSTRALIANS are on track to lose twice as much money to telephone scammers as they did last year despite growing success stopping the hoax calls before they reach victims. Telstra will on Tuesday reveal it is now stopping more than 13 million scam calls every month from criminals pretending to represent organisations like the NBN, Australian Taxation Office, Netflix and Amazon — double the number of scam calls stopped just three months ago. Despite the breakthrough, figures from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission reveal Aussies still lost more than twice as much money last month as they did in May 2020, and IDCare chief executive David Lacey said criminal attempts to steal money had risen “to a new level” in 2021, with devastating consequences for victims. Telstra revealed it had begun blocking phone calls considered to be scams before they rang in February, with its Cleaner Pipes initiative initially blocking 6.5 million scam calls each month. But Telstra chief information security officer Narelle Devine said the company had since been able to ramp up efforts to block twice that number. “We’ve continued to tune our automation and behavioural pattern analysis and now we’re blocking around 13 million suspicious scam calls a month on average from reaching our customers,” she said. “We’re becoming more aggressive in how we’re doing it and far more confident in our behavioural analysis and able to go a little bit harder and know that we’re getting the right targets.” Ms Devine said calls were not blocked based on where they came from — as scammers often disguised their true origin — but on other telltale signs the company could not “publicly announce” to avoid tipping off the criminals. Despite Telstra’s efforts, the phone is still the leading delivery method for scams in Australia and the richest avenue of theft, ACCC figures show, with Australians losing $9.3 million to phone scams in May from 9881 reports. That figure is more than double the amount lost in May 2020, at $4.1 million, and triple the number of reported scams. Common tricks include callers pretending to be from official government agencies, as well as NBN Co, Netflix or Amazon, from tech support firms, or from police with an arrest warrant. David Lacey, chief executive officer of IDCare that supports victims of scams and identity theft, said attempts to steal money, personal details, and break into devices soared this year. “In the first four months of 2021, we’ve seen more people engage with phone scams than they did in the first four months of Covid. It’s gone to a new level,” he said. “The dominant scam that we’re seeing at the moment is telephone remote access, where they convince someone to provide access to their phone, tablet or computer. “It can be quite embarrassing for people, and quite harmful emotionally.” Mr Lacey said Australians should brace for more scam calls pretending to come from the ATO over the coming months and should not be afraid to ask questions and to be “precious” with their personal information if a call was “not sitting well”. The rise also came despite the Australian Communication and Media Authority’s new rules ordering telcos to detect, trace, and block scam calls in December. The Authority recently signed an agreement with America’s Federal Communications Commission to jointly crack down on phone scammers. Ms Devine said Telstra would share its findings with ACMA and other providers, as well as ramping up efforts to make it too hard to steal from victims. “There will be a tipping point where it’s just not worth their while,” she said. “With scam calls the advice remains consistent — just don’t engage with them, hang up. A legitimate business isn’t going to call you unsolicited and ask for personal information.”