Watchdog to sink teeth into digital scammers

THE nation’s communications and media watchdog will extend its crackdown on digital platforms that allow misinformation to be hosted, posted and spread, and increase efforts to counter phone spam and scams.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority, which regulates broadcast and telecommunications, will announce on Monday it will toughen its approach to platform operators that fail to police misinformation on their sites.

This comes after Adobe, Apple, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Redbubble, TikTok and Twitter signed on to the disinformation and misinformation code of practice last year. In addition, the ACMA will seek to counter the rise of phone spam, scam calls and texts, and step up oversight of businesses that fail to unsubscribe customers on request.

It will also call on telcos to improve efforts to inform customers in distress of hardship measures available to them.

ACMA chairwoman Nerida O’Loughlin said the regulator’s priorities would build on its measures from last year, many of which had been folded into “business as usual”.

Ms O’Loughlin said the ACMA had been targeting spam messaging since 2019, but the issue was “endemic” and preventing it was like “whacka-mole”.

She said the regulator was particularly concerned about the distribution of messages falsely claiming to be from the Australian Taxation Office, and others purporting to be from Bendigo Bank.

Ms O’Loughlin said the authority would also target Australians buying devices online which when used here blocked frequencies set aside for other purposes.