Do No Originate List eradicates fake ATO, Centrelink, myGov and Medicare text messages

Those annoying fake texts that purport to be from government agencies are about to be deleted permanently. Find out how.

Scam text messages that pretend to be from the Australian Taxation Office or myGov are set to be all but a thing of the past.

The prediction of a virtual eradication follows a 12-month trial of new technology that successfully stopped 100 per cent of SMS ‘phishing’ frauds disguised as being from government agencies.

Phishing messages are one of the most common ways for cyber criminals to get access to

A fake text purporting to be from Medicare. Source: Services Australia

the identities — and ultimately, money — of unsuspecting phone owners.

In the trial, scams were blocked using a ‘Do Not Originate List’.

The list acts as a checkpoint, halting messages that cannot be authenticated as having come from hardware used by, for example, Medicare or Centrelink.

Such agencies have been popular fronts for fraudsters during the pandemic.

This is partly because we have become more used to getting messages from these arms of government since the Covid-19 outbreak, with face-to-face services largely off limits.

Scammers have also been trying to send more official-looking texts due to it being more difficult for them to make fraudulent phone calls.

About 210 million dodgy calls have been stopped since new rules for telecommunications companies were introduced in December 2020.

Evidence of the increase in scam texts can be seen in data from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Scamwatch service.

It logged about 4400 complaints about phishing texts last month, up from around 1400 in September 2020. Only a tiny fraction of scam messages are reported.

Following the success of the Do No Originate trial, Federal Communications Minister Paul Fletcher has written to NBN Co, Australian Post and the big banks to invite them to join the list.

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher. Picture: NCA NewsWire

“The trial has worked very effectively so we’ve now put the system in place,” Mr Fletcher told The Daily Telegraph.

The Minister said he had received many complaints about scam texts, including from his mother.

“We think this will greatly reduce the number of scam texts purporting to come from any of the organisations involved,” he said.

“The telcos … will only let a text go through if it comes from one of those authenticated numbers or pieces of messaging infrastructure.”

Mr Fletcher said that already there had been a drop off in fake texts claiming to be from Centrelink.

“The scammers have moved on, because the agency is no longer a soft touch,” he said.

Originally published as Do No Originate List eradicates fake ATO, Centrelink, myGov and Medicare text messages