Scott Simpson: Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister on the anti-scam alliance, cracking down on digital scams

Privacy laws may need to be tweaked to allow for a new alliance to combat scams. 

The Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister has announced the Anti-Scam Alliance, which joins government, industry, and consumer groups. 

The alliance establishes a formal structure for industries to share data about scams and shut them down in real-time. 

Minister Scott Simpson told Heather du Plessis-Allan the Government is exploring ways to ensure all laws are complied with. 

He also believes Facebook has a role to play in cracking down on scams. 

Meta is involved in the alliance, and Simpson says Facebook should ensure scammers don't use their site. 

He told du Plessis-Allan rules are in place to control advertising in print media but not in the digital world. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The government is promising to crack down on scams with
a new anti scam alliance. It's made up of the
major banks, the talco's police, Google and Meta, which is
Facebook's parent company, and various others. Scott Simpson is the
COMMAS and Consumer Affairs mien A stand with us morning Scott.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hi, Good morning, Heather.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
So what is the point of this alliance? Is it
basically to get them to hand over information will freely
between themselves.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Yeah, look, that's exactly right. It's to get them sharing
their resources, their people, their talent, their knowledge to help
fight scams. Traditionally, and usually what happens is that these
entities all work in their own little silos and they
have a lot of data and information that is of
interest to other players within the sector, but they don't

(00:43):
share it. So there's a very high level of goodwill
amongst players. It's quite a big team in the alliance
and it represents some big players. So I'm very excited
about it and I hope it's going to help. It's
not a silver bullet, by the way, Heather. This is
not the ball and end all of scams, but it's
a good step in the right direction. Scott.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Obvious problem is going to be privacy laws. Right, you
might have a lot of information, but you can't give
it to me because you'd be breaching someone's privacy. How
do you get around that?

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, well, look we will probably have to tweak some
of that. Although New Zealand's privacy laws are quite robust
and strong and do allow for credible sharing of information.
But that's something that I want to look at as
part of this alliance setup. This is just the beginning,
it's not an end. So there are some things that
we will have to tweet. One of the things is

(01:28):
you've got potential competitors talking to each other about how
they do business and what information they have. So we
want to make sure that they are able to do
that in a way that doesn't breach non compete rules.
For instance.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
What kind of what could Facebook really do to help here?

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Well, one of the things that Facebook could really do
is make sure that scammers don't go on their platform.
So often the first interaction that people have is maybe
on something like Facebook marketplace, and so if they the
digital providers, we're a newspaper for instance, or a radio station,
there are existing rules and protocols that prevent that kind

(02:07):
of advertising occurring. That's not the case in the digital
platform area at the moment, and so that's something I'm
keeping a close eye on as well.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Yeah, do you reckon they'll play ball though, because they're
hardly known to be ball players.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Well, as I say, I've been really impressed with the
high degree of goodwill. Other countries are facing exactly the
same sorts of issues and although we are a small
player internationally around the world, this is a big issue.
And funnily enough, if scams was an economy, it would
be the third largest economy on the planet, So this

(02:39):
is big stuff. And those digital platform providers they play
around the world. So yes, we're small, but we want
to have the same kind of protocols in place that
they have in other jurisdictions as well, and that's what
they've offered to do here. I'm really excited about.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Thanks very much, Scott, talk to you again soon. That
scop since in the Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister. For
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