Professor Lacey said Australia's major telcos differed in how well or badly they dealt with customers reporting phone spoofing and phone scam problems. "Our expectation is that in the next 12 to 24 months we'll start to see that grow and that's based purely on the assumption that that's what we're seeing the same criminal groups do in other countries," he said. "The challenge that we find is that there does not appear to be one absolute owner of that problem."Īnd he said phone spoofing was set to get worse in Australia. "There's no shortage of organisations in government or indeed industry that have a stake," he said. Professor Lacey said phone spoofing was not regulated by one body or law in Australia, which could make it hard for consumers affected by phone spoofing to get help. While deceitful phone spoofing is not explicitly outlawed in Australia, fraudulent use of caller ID is illegal. "And as a result of that, community members or small businesses are starting to receive many calls from Australians who are quite rightly fed up with transnational organised crime calling their number." "I think their landline number has been deliberately stolen by a transnational crime syndicate so that when they make phone calls to scam Australians, the phone number that they look like they're calling from is actually another victim in the country or a community member," he said. Professor Lacey said Joy and Mr Fitzgerald had probably been caught up in an illegal international phone scam. "When you are in regional and remote parts of the country, communication is your lifeline." International crime calling One day, out of the blue, she too started being bombarded with calls from people all over Australia. One case involved Joy (not her real name), a 69-year-old woman who lives alone in a small rural town in Western Victoria, doesn't use a mobile phone or the internet and she has had the same landline phone number for more than 30 years. Let alone those living in the country who are often more reliant on their landline services. This kind of phone spoofing can be a real problem for the elderly. Professor Lacey said while many people probably answered that call, others missed it and called back, only to reach a confused and frustrated Mr Fitzgerald, rather than the phone scammer that had called them. "By choosing any particular number in the community whether it be just a community member or a small business they're already separating themselves from the criminal activity that's going on when they're making those telephone scam calls." "In a way what they're trying to do is distance themselves from the crime. In this case it appears scammers have randomly picked Mr Fitzgerald's number to make scam calls from. Professor of cybersecurity at University of the Sunshine Coast, Dave Lacey, said it was more than likely Mr Fitzgerald's number had been spoofed by a phone scammer. "When I spoke to Telstra, I was up at the Telstra shop, he actually just stood there and said 'I can't see a problem, I don't think there is one'." Who's calling? Mr Fitzgerald went to Telstra about the problem but was met with a blank. "I probably lost two days and in two days I could make upwards of $10,000 just by sitting in the office organising things," he said. Mr Fitzgerald said he was receiving so many calls his business phone was rendered temporarily useless. "They ring me up, old farmers, real old-school people, they'll still have this number in their old diary book … they ring that number for a bit of steel." "I got clientele that probably have the number written on their shed wall," Mr Fitzgerald said. Mr Fitzgerald said he was faced with the prospect of having to change his number, not an attractive prospect given he had recently bought the business and all the goodwill that came with its phone number. The affected number was Mr Fitzgerald's business landline for his steel and engineering company in Wangaratta in north east Victoria. I tried to explain to him that my phone had been hacked." "My phone number had called him about 25 times in a day. "I had one bloke, he rang me up and he threatened to go to the coppers.
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