Figures released by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) show a dramatic decrease in complaints about scam calls. Complaints about scam robotexts also dropped enormously during the financial year ended June 2023, after peaking during the previous financial year.
As shown in the graph, there were 14,107 complaints about scam calls in the 2020-21 financial year. This halved to 7,052 in the 2021-22 financial year. The likeliest explanation would be the adoption of an aggressive call blocking program which became mandatory in December 2020. The number of complaints about scam calls has since fallen again, to 3,998 for the most recent financial year. This represents a 72 percent drop over two years.
Complaints about scam SMS messages totaled 1,393 in 2020-21 but rose by 132 percent to 3,245 in 2021-22. The number of complaints then plummeted by 86 percent in 2022-23, to just 465. Some of the methods used to reduce scam calls were copied and made mandatory for scam SMS messages in July 2022.
The number of complaints is not a reliable measure of the number of scam communications. People grow tired of complaining about problems which are not solved, and only a minority of people ever complain. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) estimates that only 13 percent of frauds are reported by victims. However, there were sharp falls in the number of complaints following the adoption of stringent rules on the blocking of suspicious calls and messages. It is difficult to believe that this might only be a coincidence.
Australia has taken a common sense approach to reducing scam calls and messages that prioritized mitigations which were simple, cost-effective and implemented rapidly. They have not emulated much more expensive techniques like STIR/SHAKEN. Other national regulators who want to understand how to reduce scam calls and messages should pay attention to Australia’s success story. Whilst some regulators routinely use the analogy of whac-a-mole to defend the poor results that have been delivered by elaborate and convoluted anti-fraud schemes, Australia says it keeps blocking an ever-rising number of illegal communications, seemingly to great effect.
Failing regulators waste money and time whilst pretending that fraud cannot be defeated. Australia has shown that scams can be massively reduced when the national regulator and responsible telcos agree upon a sensible plan and then execute it well.
