The action we need to stop rampant online scamming

Monday, 16 December 2024

ANZ's head of customer protection Alan Thomsen speaks about the prevalence of scams on Facebook Marketplace at an anti-scam event in July 2024.

Vivien Maidaborn is chief executive of InternetNZ, a non-profit industry body which advocates on issues regarding the internet in New Zealand.

OPINION: Christmas shopping has become an online affair for many New Zealanders and the risk of encountering a scam is higher than ever.

It’s estimated that Kiwis were scammed out of $2.3 billion in the 12 months to August this year. The combination of more sophisticated scams, coupled with a lack of government regulation on platforms, is hurting consumers and internet users.

This year’s InternetNZ Insights research showed that only 38% of us know where to report something we’ve seen online that might be harmful or dangerous. Scams can now find us in the places on the internet we know, trust, and most frequently use.

We’ve had to become vigilant with checking two-factor authentication, keeping an eye out for fake looking domain names, and not falling for deals that seem too good to be true.

Social media is a biggie, too, and our favourite platforms have become massive in the proliferation of scams, acting as a trojan horse for nefarious activity and regularly breaching the defences of innocent account holders.

Governments around the world are working on it, but global consistency has been hard to achieve, due to the masses of money and power the platforms have accrued since the beginning of the never-ending social media boom.

New Zealanders are estimated to have lost $2.3 billion to scammers in the year to August.

Globally, and in the New Zealand context, the problem requires better education and government action because things aren’t right if Kiwis are being swindled out of that much money.

In America, the home of Silicon Valley, there were as many as 880,000 cyber crime incidents in 2023, which is symptomatic of the US government's lax attitude to regulation.

Places like the EU and Australia have been extremely proactive in the face of staunch and often threatening opposition to consumer protection regulation, particularly from Meta.

Scams can now find us in the places on the internet we know, trust, and most frequently use, writes Vivien Maidaborn.

New Zealand has an opportunity to do better. Now that Cert NZ (Computer Emergency Response Team) has become part of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the Cert brand is being phased out, it’s important that the NCSC works alongside communities to rebuild trust. The problem of people not knowing where to go for information should be part of this.

A sustained, widespread campaign of information helping people to be safer from scams should be undertaken, led by the government, to step up the protection of New Zealanders.

We don't want to fall into the trap of simple solutions in a highly complex and volatile, fast-changing environment. We need ongoing, sustained responses, from education through to more action for regulatory bodies. We need really strong fundamentals like a funded cybersecurity strategy.

Regulation of social media platforms is top of the list. Social media platforms need to take more action on scams and the government should be prepared to use the tools it has to make that happen.

NetSafe chief executive Brent Carey has rightly called for a single government minister to be in charge of online fraud and I think there should be a similar approach to the way we deal with big online platforms.

Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly is planning to work with his Singaporean and Australian counterparts on anti-scam measures.

We also agree with calls for an anti-scam centre. As a small country we’ll need help taking on the big guns, so a collaborative approach will be the key to giving New Zealand the ability to target social media platforms.

It’s promising to hear that Consumer Affairs Minister Andrew Bayly plans to meet with his Australian and Singaporean counterparts to establish a collective approach.

Singapore has one of the most successful responses to scams and is now a benchmark for other countries. It has an Anti-Scam Command that brings together scam investigation, incident response, intervention, enforcement, and sense-making capabilities under a single umbrella. The model has been successful in partnering with banks in particular. In a two-month operation this year they were able to disrupt 2016 ongoing scams and prevent potential financial losses of more than $90 million.

Several other countries, including Malaysia, Australia and Canada, also now have dedicated units to fight scams. Australia has a new Scams Prevention Framework, giving new powers to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to compel banks, telecommunications companies, and social media platforms to take active steps to combat scams.

We need to see that here, too, so that our most vulnerable citizens are less likely to fall into the growing number of traps.

We need to see legislation that puts the onus on protecting the New Zealand consumer. Australia is imposing fines of up to $50m and a similar deterrent would be needed here.

New Zealanders have been hit far too hard in the pocket over recent years and that $2.3b figure will grow if the Government doesn’t put the boot into scams.