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The Aussie telco has released new data collected as part of its Call Stop scam prevention platform.
Optus has responded to National Scam Awareness Week by releasing a trove of data gathered as part of its scam prevention platform, Call Stop.
The headline figure is that Optus said its Call Stop platform – with assistance from Optus’ partners, the National Anti-Scam Centre and the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange – has saved losses of up to $250 million.
Optus also reported that 90,000 Australians had reported scams via Optus ScamWise, with collected data revealing the most common scam categories – scams related to tax payments, government impersonation scams, family impersonation, reward programs, and threats of bank suspension.
According to Optus, its busiest day this year in terms of scams was 30 June, right around tax time. Optus blocked over 2.4 million scam messages on its network that day.
“At a time when scammers continue to get more creative and aggressive in their attempts, Optus’ blocking systems and scam tools, such as Call Stop and Optus ScamWise, protect our customers,” Matt Williams, Optus’ managing director of customer solutions, said in a statement.
“We are seeing some consistent trends through Optus ScamWise. Typically, scammers won’t address the individual by name, and they have a sense of urgency associated with what they are asking. A lot of the scams have spelling mistakes, and the majority are requesting customers follow a link instead of accessing an app, which would be more secure.”
Australian Financial Crimes Exchange managing director David Pegley said that Call Stop is an essential part of an important ‘intel loop’ between banks, telcos, and social media platforms.
“We are proud to have collaborated with Optus on the groundbreaking work that went into Call Stop. As we know, shortening the time between detecting a scam and disrupting a scam means more Australians are protected,” Pegley said.
“Call Stop led to the AFCX’s Anti-Scam Intel Loop, which enables banks and National Anti-Scam Centre to share scam intelligence with a larger number of telcos and a social media platform, so that more scam communications can be stopped before Australians are exposed to them.”
Dr Mamello Thinyane, Optus’ chair of cyber security and data science at UniSA, added that the data revealed the wide breadth of scam types.
“There are new techniques and types of scams [that] are enabled by technology and recent AI developments, but none of the underlying mechanisms are really new. It’s the same old effect mechanisms such as deception (e.g. deepfakes, typo-squatting), authority (e.g. an email from the boss), social proof or conformity, distraction, and persuasion (e.g. the urgency, scarcity, baiting or quid pro quo),” Thinyane said.
“However, there is no doubt AI is having, and will continue to have, a transformative impact on online scams. AI is enabling cyber criminals to quickly generate malicious software, to produce appropriately crafted messages for phishing attacks, and to create deepfakes, which can mimic people’s voices and faces in social engineering attacks.”
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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