Data sharing key to hunting down scammers.

 

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has welcomed the Australian Government’s commitment to establish a new National Anti-Scam Centre (NASC).

 

The latest national Budget allocated $58 million in funding to the ACCC to complete the set-up of the National Anti-Scam centre over the next two years.

 

“We’ll be using this funding to build the technology needed to support high frequency data sharing with a range of agencies, law enforcement and the private sector, with the mission to make Australia a harder target for scammers,” ACCC deputy chair Catriona Lowe said.

 

The National Anti-Scam Centre will be phased in from 1 July 2023, with capability, including data-sharing technology, to be built over the next three years.

 

“In 2022, text messages surpassed phone calls as the most reported contact method by scammers with almost 80,000 reports about SMS scams. We welcome the Federal Government’s commitment to introduce an SMS Sender ID register, similar to that implemented in Singapore, which will assist in disrupting impersonation scams and help consumers determine whether a text message using a sender ID is from a trusted source,” Lowe said.