World needs an anti-scam team

The veil of cyber sophistication sadly gives the world’s scammers a faint glamour. It’s easy to imagine they are smarter than the rest of us.

They are certainly more knowledgeable about a lot of things. Not least about how to hack into millions of email accounts, often from overseas. About copying or mimicking legitimate websites and manipulating their victims’ emotions.

But far from being secret geniuses, scammers are just criminals – modernday highwaymen – who use the internet to extort money from the naive and vulnerable.

And last year, Kiwis lost an estimated $12 million to their cruel tricks and scary games, according to cyber security firm, NetSafe. That’s a massive rise in just a few years on the 2012 estimate of $4m.

So we are getting worse at spotting their criminality among the waves of information which lands in our email inboxes, as they get better at their pretence.

This growing, global problem needs a coordinated approach from all agencies. Just like a virus, the problem is likely to mutate as greater weapons are employed, but it is worth the effort.

Stamping it out can only be achieved through teamwork by domestic agencies in nation states, and an international datasharing system, as much of this criminal activity happens in countries outside those where the victims are scammed.

Police forces are at the sharp end. They offer the obvious place to turn when a citizen has been defrauded.

But even specialised cyber teams attached to any public service or government department have their work cut out tackling scamming on this level. Surely it is unfair to expect them to be able to destroy the worlds of these international computer experts or even to keep up with them. The cost of an attempt would run into the billions.

The only chance is for an internationally funded cyber defence force backed with cash and some of the world’s top computer brains. That is the real level of cooperation we need.