Spark said more than 1 million text scams have been blocked since October. Photo: 123rf
A major telecommunications company says its rising success against text message scammers is due to its new firewall deterring them from making attacks.
Spark launched its SMS (Short Message Service) firewall a year ago and said it has blocked more than 1 million text scams since October, with half of those blocked in February.
The Department of Internal Affairs said it had also seen a substantial drop in scam reports from Spark customers – making up less than 2 percent of total reported text scams in February.
The firewall used a global database, detected URLs, phrases and calls to action that were typically found in text scams.
Spark said since the implementation of the SMS firewall, it has been able to detect and block scammers five times faster, and expected it to improve further.
“These filters are proving to be highly effective, leading scammers to focus their efforts on providers that may not yet have this functionality in place, knowing that scam messages are quickly blocked when attempting to use Spark,” the company said.
Spark network and operations director Renee Mateparae said the firewall showed the technology worked, and hoped others could see the benefit.
“The best outcome for us is that all customers, regardless of what provider they are with, are protected,” she said. “And working as an industry to make sure we are reducing the level of scams that Kiwis are subject to.”
Mateparae said Spark was working with partners from not just in the telco industry, but also banks, digital platforms and government agencies to share intelligence.
Spark said it was working on preventing harm from telephone scams, but Mateparae said it was harder.
“Given it’s a voice platform, and so it depends on what people are saying,” she said. “It’s much harder than email or SMS to be able to do that monitoring and filtering.”
Mateparae urged people to be vigilant around calls from unknown and overseas numbers.
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