The Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) has reduced complaints about scam calls from just over 14 000 in 2021 to 966 for the first nine months of its current financial year. Similarly, complaints about scam SMSes have also plunged, from 1 400 to a mere 64 over the same period.

According to its website, Acma’s success in fighting the scam call scourge is attributable to its “comprehensive and multipronged” approach and its collaboration with the National Anti-Scam Centre (NASC).

The strategy involves disrupting scammers at the network level, improving consumer awareness and fostering collaboration across sectors.

“We work to reduce the threat of phone scams by making, promoting and enforcing telco rules, collaborating domestically and internationally, and progressing initiatives such as the SMS sender ID register to make Australia a hard target for scammers,” Acma said.

Information regulation is an outgrowth of the digital age and still relatively new. As such, regulators around the world tend to learn from and consult each other to develop their frameworks. South Africa’s own Protection of Personal Information Act (Popia) is largely based on the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

In 2022, Acma introduced legislation that placed mandatory obligations on mobile operators to identify, trace and block scam calls and SMSes. To meet these obligations, operators had to implement systems to detect and block suspicious calls at the network level before they could reach users. The regulator said operators reported blocking more than 2.3 billion scam calls and “hundreds of millions” of scam SMSes by December 2024.

SMS sender ID

The regulations also require Australian operators to share information that will help identify and disrupt scam campaigns with each other and other government bodies. Systems to prevent the spoofing of numbers, where scammers pose as legitimate businesses, were also legislated.

In another initiative, Acma in December 2023 piloted an SMS sender ID register, which is essentially a database held by mobile operators used to confirm that messages claiming to be from an official institution such as the government or a bank are really from that source.

Read: South Africans hit by wave of sophisticated banking scams

Acma has also had notable success in fighting Sim swap fraud. Mobile numbers have come to be important identifiers across a number of platforms, including banks. They are even more important as they are used for two-factor authentication (2FA) in banking apps and other web-based platforms.

Scammers use unauthorised Sim swaps to gain access to a user’s mobile device so they can intercept 2FA messages and infiltrate, or hijack, their accounts. To combat this, Australian authorities introduced rules requiring mobile operators to implement multifactor authentication before issuing a new Sim.

These initiatives have been complemented by a consumer awareness campaign by Australia’s National Anti-Scam Centre aimed at empowering citizens with a basic set of tools to help identify, avoid and report scams.

The NASC is not the only government agency that is ollaborating with Acma. Australia’s competition authorities also contribute to consumer awareness by running Scamwatch, a public resource that provides information on current scams, how to spot them and how to avoid being exploited.

South Africa’s data privacy laws put no obligation on mobile operators to identify and block scammers at the network level. Many South African’s rely on apps like Truecaller to identify and block spam and malicious calls on their behalf, but the company may face a probe by the Information Regulator for alleged Popia infringements.

In an October 2024 report about the Information Regulator’s stance on data hoarding by security at gated communities and office parks, its chair Pansy Tlakula said Popia, although not perfect, is adequate for dealing with issues around data privacy in South Africa.

Read: Truecaller may face Popia probe by Information Regulator

However, the real problem with South Africa’s data privacy laws is that the Information Regulator’s powers to enforce the legislation are limited. It has approached parliament with proposed amendments to Popia through which it is seeking to expand its powers of enforcement. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media

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