Danu Abeysuriya: Rush Digital founder on the new measures from the Government, private sector to combat text scams

The Government's teaming up with the private sector to get on top of text scams. 

When people report scam texts as junk on some phones, text messages will soon go directly to the Department of Internal Affairs. 

It can then share the info with telcos so they can be blocked. 

Rush Digital founder and chief executive Danu Abeysuriya told Andrew Dickens we have to work together to solve this problem. 

He sees it as a good approach because if you get a few reports of spam, thousands of further texts can be blocked. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, the government's announced an easy way for technology
companies to report scams directly to the Department of Internal Affairs.
It means why mobile phone report junk on scam text messages,
It will be reported straight to the department. Danowebers Earlier
is the founder and chiefing technology officer of Rush Digital. Hello, Dan,
welcome to the show. You what's this? What's this new kit?

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah, so I think you know a little bit of background.
You know, on New Zealanders it was about two hundred
million dollars a year and that's a rising number to
scams and online scams are a big part of that.
And I think we've all probably received some form of
fishing text where you know, there's an unpaid poll or
some something, some claim about your bank and a link

(00:47):
to a dodgy u URL that, unfortunately a lot of
people do click on. Recently, private enterprise like Apple and Google,
the guys that provide all our cell phones, as well
as sort of a connectivity company like Sparking one is it.
They've all kind of realized that we all have to

(01:07):
work together to solve this problem because it's fairly complicated.
And what this new feature does means that when I
use a symbol user identifies one of these scam texts,
they can easily report that as spamm to through their
phone and it goes for central database and the ISPs
like one who's ed in Spark, as well as the

(01:30):
iPhone makers and a whole bunch of other government agencies
get access to that information and they can do things
like block text messages that have the same information from
continuing to go out. So it's kind of crowdsourcing this
information to protect others.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
So you just basically have a pressure button on your
phone and boom, everybody gets to know, from the depund
of Internal Affairs to your phone provider to everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Yeah, it basically gets an info analysis and if it's
you know, effectively there's a bunch of these and yeah,
they can be blocked. It's a really easy thing to do.
So now I think on iOS or Apple devices you
just sort of delete delete a message from an unknown
sender and it kind of brings up the option do
you want to report this as junk? And that's it's
as simple as that for you.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
And do you think it will make a big difference.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Yeah, Look, Australia is implemented a really proactive approach with
a sort of a department for the National Anti scam
or Anti crimps, online Crime Ministry or whatever. And you know,
in about a year this kind of approach has has
has seen to you know, reduce the reduce the success

(02:42):
of these things quite considerably. It's a pretty good strategy, right,
Like you get two or three of these things to
users that you know are suspicious, and the next couple
of thousand are completely blocked. Right, So it's a it's
a pretty good approach, and I'm really happy it's happening.
Actually it's a bit late, to be honest.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Well, yeah, everything's a bit like Dan, I thank you
for waking up earlier. Merry Christmas to you.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
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