There are many reasons why fraud has become endemic in the comms industry and spilled over into a rising tide of crime suffered by customers. One of the most obvious but least-voiced explanations is that CEOs and boards pay insufficient attention to tackling fraud, often preferring to do only the minimum required to comply with laws and regulations. So it makes a refreshing change to see a world leader promising that more will be done to stop the crime that occurs over comms networks. The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, used his official LinkedIn account to promise a nationwide block of malicious hyperlinks in scam messages sent by SMS and email.
A skeptic might ask why Macron and his advisers believe they can obtain a technology that is more adept at distinguishing between good and bad messages than the imperfect filters that Google and Microsoft have been working on for decades. A cynic might question if Macron has turned his attention to the problem of comms scams because he is bogged down by resistance to his economic reforms and desperate for legislative proposals unlikely to face much opposition in France’s fractured parliament. But let us welcome Macron associating himself with the fight against comms fraud. If comms fraud deserves the attention of the leader of one of the world’s largest economies, a member of the UN Security Council and a nuclear power, then perhaps a few more chief executives will deign to talk about fraud prevention from time to time.
