Efforts by banks and others to mitigate losses to scams are bearing fruit, with a decrease in scam losses over the March 2024 quarter.
“Prior to the introduction of the National Anti-Scam Centre there was an absence of cross sector engagement” the National Anti-Scam Centre quarterly update May 2024 says.
In the nine months since the National Anti-Scam Centre was established, it has brought together industry participants from the finance, telecommunications and digital platforms sectors with government and identified opportunities for these participants to work together to expand existing initiatives across the ecosystem leading to results in terms of driving down scam losses.
This update includes data about scam reports and losses reported to the National Anti-Scam Centre’s Scamwatch service (www.scamwatch.gov.au), the cybercrime reporting platform, ReportCyber (www.cyber.gov.au)1 and financial transaction data from the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange (the AFCX, www.afcx.com.au).
During this quarter all 3 data sources observed a decrease in scam losses. This continues the trend observed during the latter half of 2023 and demonstrates the continued impact of collaboration across government, industry, and law enforcement.
Australians reported $73.2 million in losses to Scamwatch, $173.2 million to ReportCyber and $99.2 million to the AFCX. The combined total this quarter was $345.6 million.
The National Anti-Scam Centre says it will integrate these (and other) key sources of scams data to provide more regular and comprehensive intelligence about scam activity in Australia.
The first stage of data integration will be achieved in July 2024 when ReportCyber data is integrated with the National Anti-Scam Centre’s Scamwatch data.
This is expected to be followed by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) in September and financial services data via the AFCX by October.
Complete data integration is dependent on near real-time data sharing arrangements to the National Anti-Scam Centre being established.
The National Anti-Scam Centre commenced receiving near real-time data from ReportCyber in December 2023.
The National Anti-Scam Centre will have full capability for near-real time data sharing (in and out) by July 2024 with negotiations to onboard entities continuing in the second half of 2024.
Ahead of full data sharing capability, to facilitate prevention and disruption of harmful scams, the National Anti-Scam Centre has automated (not real-time) data sharing arrangements sending data to 7 partners including the AFCX, which represents a significant portion of the financial sector.
Manual data sharing arrangements are in place for the National Anti-Scam Centre to share data with the telecommunications sector. Data is not yet received from the telecommunications sector. The National Anti-Scam Centre has commenced a scam website takedown service this quarter targeting, among other things, phishing scams and online shopping scams.
This is in addition to ASIC’s takedown of investment scam websites and provides broader protection for Australians against online scams.