103 million scam emails a minute
An estimated 103 million scam emails are sent every minute globally.
But there is hope that New Zealand’s anti-fraud protections are finally beginning to strengthen.
Brownyn Groot, fraud education manager at the Commission for Financial Capability, said public awareness of scams had increased, and postal fraud appeared to have fallen dramatically since New Zealand Post started intercepting scam letters.
But the big hope was that new anti-money laundering and antiterrorism laws were driving banks to invest in beefing up their fraud detection systems, so flag, query and block suspicious payments.
Groot said banks were investing in their anti-fraud systems.
‘‘Anti-money laundering, countering financing of terrorism has a lot more punch around the country, so people have to abide by those laws,’’ she said.
‘‘The Australian royal commission on banking has got a lot to do with it as well.’’
Wellington hosted the New Zealand Financial Intelligence Unit’s conference on Wednesday and Thursday, where 300 crime fighters and fraud-prevention specialists gathered.
Groot used the even to call for more support and understanding for victims of fraud, and an end to blaming them for their losses.
Ordinary New Zealanders were up against highly organised, wellfinanced criminal gangs running sophisticated operations, including large call centres in places like Africa, India and the Phillippines.
‘‘A Kiwi being targeted is not just talking to one person at the end of a phone or email; they’re up against a network with the technology to keep one step ahead of law enforcement, and the sophistication to catch anyone.’’
As well as the spam emails, there was a constant torrent of scam phone calls.
Bank of New Zealand used the conference to announce it had done a deal with IBM to beef up its fraud protections. It said the IBM Safer Payments system was ‘‘state of the art’’ and ‘‘capable of withstanding increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks and large-scale fraud breaches’’.
The bank’s chief safety and security officer, Owen Loeffellechner, said global card fraud losses were on the rise.
‘‘Banks’ time to respond is also shrinking as real-time payments mean there are just milliseconds to detect and prevent theft before it’s too late,’’ he said.
The IBM system used the data BNZ held about customers’ financial and non-financial habits (for example, where and when they tend to buy goods and services) to authenticate and profile every transaction they made. If suspicious activity was identified, transactions could be blocked immediately, or put on hold.