Privacy and practicality concerns will be weighed against the more than $33 billion that cybercrime is estimated to cost Australians every year under a proposal from federal Labor to make families and small businesses safer online.
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Labor's election pledge, released on Sunday, would introduce tough new industry codes to make tech companies responsible for kicking scammers off their platforms while also holding banks and phone companies accountable for their role in facilitating scams.
If it wins government, Labor would review scam risks and consider allowing phone companies to block dodgy URLs sent via SMS.
Shadow assistant treasurer Stephen Jones says Labor wants a National Anti-Scam Centre which can monitor and respond in real-time. The existing ScamWatch at the ACCC and the Scams Awareness Network would adopt the UK's "fusion cell" model, which brings law enforcement, banks, telcos, tech companies regulators and consumer advocates into a real-time information sharing hub.
"At the moment you've got voluntary codes operating across the industry - there are big gaps in them and they operate within silos," Mr Jones said.
"Social media providers operate as a law unto themselves. At the very least they shouldn't be able to receive advertising revenue or any income from these dodgy sources that are promoting scams. That goes for the telcos as well."
There needed to be negative incentives in place for platforms to do the right thing and for banks to act quickly when fraud is detected, he said.
To achieve this, existing data sharing arrangements between the regulators and industries needed to be replaced with proper protocols fit for the digital age.
Identifying which SMS texts include webs links to phishing sites pretending to be legitimate to steal their victim's identity is something currently prohibited under the Telecommunications Act, but Labor wants to include it in its review of the biggest scam risk threats.
"It may be after looking at this we decide the risks should lie in favor of leaving things alone. I also think many consumers are saying those hot URLs sending you off to a dodgy site are actually risks that we might need to look at."
A minister in an Albanese government would be given direct portfolio responsibility for championing the protection of consumers and businesses online.
The policy also doubles the funding for identity recovery services like IDCARE to help an additional 20,000 Australia each year after their identity is compromised.
Labor would utilise the national cabinet to make it easier for Australians to recover government ID like drivers' licenses and passports.
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Regional Australian communities are considered especially vulnerable, twice as likely as suburban and urban communities to be targeted by online scammers, according to the governments Targeting Scams report. Cultural and linguistic minority communities are also frequently targeted.
As people were forced online in the pandemic, scams rose with unsuspecting Australians estimated to have lost over $851 million to scams in 2020, but only 13 per cent of those loses were reported to the government's ScamWatch.
Businesses self-report a much higher figure for their costs - more than $33 billion in actual loses and prevention costs in 2020-21 financial year, according to the Australian Cyber Security Centre.
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