Scammers aren’t going to stop scamming because they’re making too much money, but thanks to a bit of tech, consumers are becoming more aware.
It seems there’s no way to stop the scourge of scammers, largely because they just make too much money from ripping off regular people. Whether a scammer is trying to pull a fast one with a dodgy PayPal receipt or a phishing website, there’s a good chance you’ll see at least one scam attempt a week, and probably more.
The sheer number of scam approaches are a problem, for sure, but scam calls are one of the bigger frustrations for anyone with a phone. Your number isn’t sacred, and scammers will happily call hoping to convince you by pretending to be Amazon, the government, Microsoft, the NBN, or even Telstra itself.
Any chance they can take to convince you to hand over money, a scammer will definitely take.
Telstra has been working on solutions for this as part of its “Cleaner Pipes” program, a system built not only to ease the amount of scams its customers face, but also improve its network so that it doesn’t see scam calls and messages wasting bandwidth.
We’ve seen changes to the network over time, and this week, Telstra is talking about a feature it soft-launched back in December and is rolling out this week. Called “Telstra Scam Protect”, it’s a feature that will identify scam calls with a warning in the caller ID section of your phone as the number comes in.
Designed specifically for users of the Telstra network, including the virtual operators that use Telstra such as Belong, Boost, Mate, and Woolworths, the system essentially picks up on a call with a suspicious number, and masks the caller ID as one of three messages intended to give you a heads up. They include (with our notes on how they work):
- Warning: Potential Fraud – the number is possibly fraudulent and has been spoofed to look legit
- Unverified: Overseas Call – the network has picked up on it pretending to be local, even though it’s actually coming from overseas
- Warning: Suspicious Calling Pattern – a high volume of traffic has come from this number and it is potentially spam
Each is slightly different, but means Telstra has picked up on an issue with the number calling you, and matched it to a pattern. Instead of just a random phone number calling you, its sender ID will be replaced with one of these messages, giving you an idea of what’s coming through.
It’s similar to an Android feature that provides a warning ahead of some caller IDs on devices, using either a directory of scam numbers or AI patterns to pick up on the concerns.
Telstra notes that it is currently blocking 11 million scams on average each month, and that while some of the techniques are working, criminals are adapting, making the process more difficult. As such, it can’t just block everything automatically particularly when genuine and real calls have to come through, and so is using a warning of caller ID changes like this to help reduce scammers from reaching more customers.
“Telstra Scam Protect has been developed to give customers more control by helping them make more informed decisions on which calls to answer, and which are better off ringing through to voicemail,” said Tom Beach, Consumer Executive at Telstra.
The service is active now, provided you use the Telstra network in some form, whether it’s through Telstra itself, or one of the many networks using Telstra, including Aldi, Exetel, Superloop, and others.
