This week the wires were hot with telco news. First in Australia, Parliament had hearings on the proposed Scam Prevention Framework (SPF) bill. This bill requires banks, telecom providers and digital platforms to add controls to help stop consumer scams. Failure to do so could mean being fined and requiring reimbursement to scam victims.
At the hearings, banks said they supported the SPF bill and the reimbursement of consumers if bank were not compliant with the controls. The Communications Alliance (CA), the trade association for telecom providers, was also in favor of the bill. They said they could add ‘pattern controls’ that would not necessarily stop individual scam calls and texts. CA went on to say if they met the new codes based on pattern controls, then they should not be liable for scam losses. The digital platforms, represented by Digital Industry Group Inc (DIGI), said they also support SPF. But they were uncertain about scam reimbursement because of the current lack of clarity in the legislation.
The intent of the legislation is to have controls to reduce scams and if the controls do not meet the legislation, then penalties and reimbursements follow. At the moment there is not enough clarity to insure the later will occur. The full text from the hearing can be found here.
In the UK, a new Ofcom regulation took effect at the end of January.
Phone companies must now identify and block all calls from abroad which falsely display a UK landline telephone number as a ‘Presentation Number’ – which identifies who is making a call – except in a limited number of legitimate cases.
BT supported the move, stating they were…
…able to prevent up to one million calls per day from entering its network within the first month of voluntarily implementing these measures.
Ofcom will turn its attention to the spoofing of mobile numbers later this year. This control is something all telcos worldwide should adopt for both mobile and landline numbers!
Stay tuned, as I will be back with more dispatches reflecting global developments in the war against scams.
