They have plenty of control with nsa.😗

A phone is a personal item and it comes with risks .don't answer any unknown numbers ,have voicemail scammers won't leave a message . Have all your contacts in your phone Dr ,dentist ,pet groomer etc. If you having medical app put in the number when you no longer need it delete it it. When you put fill out online info or social media nothing has a wall to your personal information .Companies pay for personal information they just get overseas callers to do their dirty work for cheap wages .Set up your phone to your standard of safety. If its too good to be true investigate Edited 15-Oct-23 11:37am

Of course

Of course! The trouble is these bloody scammers are getting smarter and will just use a new number each time you block them!..The question we have to ask is who is selling our personal data for this to be happening?..I got rid of my landline months ago because of constant scammers ringing all hours of the day and night some times on a daily basis.Unfortunately some how they now have my mobile number and email adress so are trying it on again,I just block and delete because that's all you can do.

If a thief breaks into my house and steals $10,000 worth of valuables and then gets caught, will serve several years in prison for that. A scammer who steals $10,000 from me via a telephone scam should face the same penalty as the thief, because scammers are thieves.

There is an app on-line called scam watch which has a form to fill in and send.

Bloody oath, they should!

YES, THIS GOES ON AND AND WILL TO ME NEVER YOU GET ANY HELP FROM THE GOV. AND TO TELL YOU THEY ARE SOME OF THE CALLS YOU GET BUT THAT ME WHAT ABOUT YOU //////

In an ideal world yes, but I don't think it would be implemented properly

No

government and phone company should police phone scammers better than they do now

Don’t answer the phone anymore because scam or annoying calls so let the machine answer and if it’s family or friends I’ll ring them back nuisance calls always hang up before message bank has gone through

Yes, they should take action. And Robo calls, especially those from politicians.

This is a question that should not need to be asked - of course the government should be taking action instead of telling people to be careful - what do we pay taxes for - and they should take a share of responsibility for the scam reimbursements - any phone call that doesn't show a contact I mostly ignore because apparently scammers have got fed up with me swearing at them the others are electronic voices.

Of course the Government SHOULD be taking action. The problem is they ARE NOT CAPABLE of doing anything about it. These people should be arrested and sent to prison LIKE ALL CRIMINALS. In the meantime we just have to be EXTREMELY careful. Don't wait for our totally incompetent Government!!! I live in Australia by the way. I will NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES answer any phone calls or messages unless I know who is calling. That stops MOST of it.

As you say some people are receiving up to 5 scam calls a day so how many millions is that? It's not the governments place to stop scams, I believe it's the job of the telco's that we pay for our phone service. However, at the end of the day it is up to us not to be scammed.

the should

It depends on severity of the scams

Not too many phone calls but stacks of emails everyday. Mcafee,Norton,Google,Fed Ex, I send to spam watch . Get a lot from my dear friends overseas who want to give me stacks of money. Some kind person in JFK Airport has found my lost property. My new credit card is on the way via courier. Seems these clowns have too much free time and need to get honest work. Maybe it’s time the Telcos and government got their act together and put a stop to this.

What’s we’ve these numbers against our names? That sounds like some scam or hack

Yes

Yes

definitely

If Ifs and ands were pots and pans what a wonderful world it would be! No government, no matter how Democratic, how Autocratic, Dictatorial it may be can put a stop to Phone Scams or any other types of Hoaxes, Con-jobs. It simply cannot be done because short of monitoring every single Phone Call, E-mail, Text Message every second of ever day and there will be, quite literally, billions of them 24/7 across the entire world. It is up to Us to idfentify and reject such calls and messages. All e-mails carry a note telling us the email address of every e-mail we receive. Check this thoroughly and if it looks even the slightest bit dodgy or you don't recognise the sender's email address then DELETE it. Never, ever give out you Bank Account numbers, BSB numbers, PINs, Passwords to anyone you don't know. The instant someone on the phone asks for any such details then HANG UP. If they claim to be from your Bank, Credit Union or any other Financial Organisation, and, yes, including the Local Council, and they ask for any of those details you don't have to even think about it because if they are from those Businesses they ALREADY have, with the exception of your PIN and Passwords, all your details. As they have been repeating so often, they NEVER phone, email or text you asking for any of this information. If you do give out all those details then you have left yourself open to being scammed, conned, the victim of a Hoax and it IS ALL YOUR OWN FAULT. It has been suggested that the Banks etc. should Compensate you for your losses. That is a complete nonsense. You gave the scammers, con-artists all they needed to know and you did it willingly or, at least, without Thinking. If it sounds Too Good to be True then it most certainly will be. How often have we heard people complaining as to how they lost many Hundreds of Thousands of their Money because they were told that they would get Finacial Returns in the order of 15, 20,25 Percent. If it were true then every bank, every commercial business would invest. They don't because they know those sorts of Returns on Capital simply do not exist. Governments and the Police are totally incapable of stopping this Criminal behaviour. Only we can do that. Look at the recent spate of Floods. The Police Loudly warn people Not to Drive or Walk through Flooded areas BUT people still do and they lose their lives. Their own Stupidity and no-one can blame the Police or other Emergency Workers for that. Governments and Police are constantly Warning us about these scams etc. and people, often simply driven by Greed, ignore those warnings and then expect other to feel sorry for them and claim that they should be compensated for their own stupidity.Edited 13-Oct-23 16:51pm

These scam calls along with the telemarketers calls only increased after the telco companies sold everybody's phone number to the telemarketing companies. I don't answer the home phone anymore because of the telemarketers & now my mobile is just as bad. The government should clamp down on who has access to your phone number.

I get those all the time so now I have a message saying I no longer answer the phone due to telemarketers and scammers so pls leave a message and I will get back to you, and guess what they just hang up...

The amount of scam phone calls and emails I’ve received lately is really giving me the 💩. Seeming as though a lot of the phone companies main offices are outside Australia, I believe that the companies should be ensuring safety measures from scammers etc, and yes the government should also enforce certain measures are made for Australia.

It's up to the phone companies first and foremost but the government should have rukes about it. Last time I got one, my phone company (no names but starts with T) told me it's up to the maker of my phone to do that. THEY should be blocking the numbers, not the phone company!! What hope is there when the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing?

yes it is great stupid now i get at least 10 calls a day and i am on the no call register which is a joke the government and bank should take more action against these scammers maybe if we didnt more all our call centre overseas these people wouldn't have all our information it only got worse once the banks wanted to save money n send call centre overseas where i am sure most of the employees would sell you inform quite happierly

YES

As course they should, that's what they are supposed to be their for arent they...to protect us

The government doesn’t know how to do anything right so I spend my time telling everyone and anyone, most importantly the elderly, about these scams……see something, say something #SafetyFirst

I would say yes,but what.These people are like ghosts. They are very skilled at what they do. They use multiple phone lines ,email addresses etc,take your money and disappear. Cybercrime is everywhere,even big businesses get hacked. I had my bank account emptied just after the fires in 2019. They hacked my phone through Google,accessed my PayPal account 9ver the public holidays during Christmas,took out small amounts the first 2 days,then took the lot. The money was tracked to 2 locations on in Berlin and another in the Sudan originally then these accounts were emptied and closed. I was reimbursed,but since then I have never used PayPal,it just isn't secure. I hope the government, police,or whomever can find a way of doing something to stop this. Screen phone calls,don't open emails from people saying you have won something or getting something free. Nothing is for free these days.

Yes

Obviously yes

Too busy wasting money on the voice!

OF COURSE THEY SHOULD BUT THE ARE NOT INTERESTED , MAYBE IF IT WAS ONE OF THEIR OWN.??????

definitely, the only people who should ring you are the people you give your number to, this crap is and has become a way of life to the point where I rarely answer my phone

Scams are definitely out of control.

About the only thing the government can do about "robo scams" is to bring back the No Call List with some teeth to it but then they would have to hire all kinds of people to educate, train, get recordings, trace, charge, try in court, convict and punish. Sounds like a huge hit on our tax revenue. All that can be done reasonably (I think, anyway) is pay attention to the number on your screen and decide if you want to talk to them. Just because the darn phone rings does not mean you have to answer it. It seems to me that's what pre-teens and tweenies do.

I have got to the stage when I get a call with no name attached to the number I block it knowing that if it is someone I know they will leave a message if I don't answer.

Yes I think they should. We were on a do not call list which I think isn't working any more. We only have a mobile phone and we hardly get any phone calls. Yes if it is an unknown caller and we aren't expecting a call from a number like that we simply don't answer it. My Dad tries to keep them on the phone longer to waste their time and then hangs up. It is easy to fall for a scam so Please be careful and never give any one you are unsure of any personal details especially credit cards or give some one access to your computer remotely. It's hard to stop because a lot of the scammers aren't even in this country. We all need to keep our wits about us and if in doubt say no or just hang up.

Don't want any more tax money spent on this in a cost of living crisis. Seen plenty of police campaigns (NZ) on how to educate yourself about scams. I suspect if we pay more tax money on this, the population would pay more than what is lost annually by individuals - ironically kind of a scam itself. It's up to people to educate themselves.

My phone company allows me to select report as a scam when I receive texts or calls, so it's easy to do.

Something should have been done a long time ago. Apparently our government does not care enough to do anything about it. They do not care about all of the people that are scammed every single day. All of the money they waste on stupidity, this problem could have been taken care of a long time ago.

If I have time and can be bothered, I play along for as long as possible, to try and waste their time. The time I’m taking to them is time they can’t use to scam someone else. All they want is to find someone to scam quickly, and work on them. So use their strategy, and work on them. Of course, don’t give them any personal information, and don’t download anything to your phone. When you’re supposed to be downloading something, tell them your connection is slow, and keep going on, and then tell them you’ve lost everything, and they should start again. If they ever hang up on you angry and tell you: “you’re wasting my time”, you’ve won the jackpot!

Surely it should be the phone networks that need to take real action by not letting these bogus thieves the ability to phone anyone.

I think the government should control the phone network and issue us with numbers then, they can track who you call and who calls you, see sorted. Or you could just not be a f**king dumb-arse and hand over your personal info to every tom, Dickhead and harry.

yes they should cause the most ones that fall for em are our most vulnerable clients

As we report scams to the Government 'ScamWatch' site, then there should be a way of blocking them from scamming others.

"just say no"

The Government do a lot for us, we need to be awake to this stuff and hang up and ring your bank, post shop, or whoever a nd ask them if they have rung you.

The Feral Government caused them by allowing Australian Companies to move their call centers Off Shore and hence the scammers had access to the technology as well as the Private Data that is not covered by the Privacy Act of Australia so we get constant scam calls. I personally get at least 4 a day ranging We are from Visa and Mastercard Security and when you point out to them that Visa and Mastercard are 2 different companies they deny this and claim that they have merged the best one was they merged today I have heard. So you can thank the low life subhuman species of Homo Sapiens we all know of as Politicians for this and once they let the Genie out of the bottle there is no way to get it back in. Get used to it because it's only going ot get worse.

It has.sadly become rhe norm because they profit from the trust.of others. They can rot in hell

Neil in Australia Canberra should take action but they will not as they are mainly criminals

Yes as the scammers are the SCUM of Earth.

Yes, I think they should, but with the present global and national situation I doubt they will have time, resources and money for this.

I used to get multiple calls per day from several similar numbers. One day I had enough and ended up calling all of them back repeatedly, spending several hours wasting their time acting strange and telling them about my sick pet. That was the end of it lol. Government should do something but I don't think they can as often the calls are coming from places like India and they use a program to change their phone numbers.Edited 13-Oct-23 09:53am

Yes government should do more. Shut these idiots down.

I used to get a lot of calls from the Microsoft Technical Department about my computer having viruses. My standard response was "I use a Mac." (end of phone call)

I always tell dubious phone callers that I only have frozen chickens left and what is their credit card number please……..lol

Yes, its an increasing problem that is going on, ripping off unwary people. Not acceptable.

Yes definitely.we got scammed $1000 with PayPal that we had never used before. We consider ourselves scam savvy but we were done. The police told us it was a rand new one and we had no hope of getting our money back (overseas scammers}

Yes yes yes I block the number if a scam call. If someone wants me they will leave a message. Frustrating but lucky I haven’t lost any money to them!

OK. Lets have a look at this. Exactly how do you expect the Government to stop phone scams????? Why do you think it is up to the Government to stop phone scams from the networks of private Telcos??? What makes you think police don't investigate phone scams??? Unless the Government can legislate to make people use common sense there is little that can be done. It's always easy to blame everybody else if you get scammed, admittedly there are some sophisticated scams out there, but not phone scams...they are pretty basic things that rely on people being silly. Phone numbers are available freely and are easy to get. it is no problem at all. Have a think about who has your number.....did you use it to join this site for example....why??? I will use the Medibank example again....I saw an interview with one of the hackers involved...he said his hackers mates love doing stuff in Australia because it is so easy because people are so careless. Example....how many people used their real birthday to join this site or Facebook or Instagram or Tik Tok and why???? Why do you think they need it???? Have you posted pics of your new house and your new car with the rego plates showing??? Have you posted pics of your kids and yourself on your two week holiday overseas??? What about the $6000 dog you just bought??? Remember the dog nappings that happened a while back? Did you give Facebook etc your phone number??? Your DOB??? your address???? Do you understand what happens when you install an app on your phone?? Do you PAY for good anti virus programs? Do you scan your phone and computer regularly? etc etc etc. The Government cannot protect you from your own actions. Better to look to where the real blame for successful scams lay instead of saying ' it wasn't my fault' and blaming others.

Yes although the cost of living and housing as well as other things are more important right now

Yes, and other deeper important things since we're entering the A.I. eraEdited 13-Oct-23 09:04am

Yes, but the government should be more focused on more important issues

In Australia we do have some controls but the calls are becoming worse . My advice is you know the minute they open their mouth that they are scam calls. I just slam the phone down. We still get calls that are outright nuisance. The problem is they use one phone number for so many calls & then disconnect and use another one. Somehow they are finding out which numbers are unused or available and log into those. While they can find the unused numbers available it won't stop. No one should be able to know which numbers are not in use. Someone in these Phone companies are passing idle numbers to someone for a fee.. U just have to be alert. There is a number in Australia you can ring, put the number in that shows in your messages and a lot of the times they can tell you it's an unlisted number or whose it is. Just google it. If I don't know the number, I go in and check it and if it doesn't register on their list, then out it goes. Edited 13-Oct-23 08:50am

Absolutely. Amazing how they let this continue when they have the technology to stop it. Private citizens are being more active in stopping these scams.

If you don't know the caller just hang up, for crying out loud. If it's legit, they'll call back. We've all been warned long enough by now. They only keep calling as long as they're receiving a response.

Scam calls are just pathetic, and they cause a lot of heartache if you loose your money for example to a love scam. I think all mobile phones should have a delete, block and report app that way if you don't know the person/s, business or charity then a press of the button will notify the company not to call you again. When on facebook only talk to people and share information that you have met in person. We all have been taught how to stay safe online and the government have enough to do with trying to make our world a better place to live in.

Is the government the answer to all of life's problems? Can we expect to be protected from everything and reimbursed if we do something risky?

People should start taking responsibility for their own affairs, not rely on the government to do everything. Blocking programs are readily available and not expensive.

NO, YOU DEAL WITH THEM, There are ways to protect yourself, safe lists/ only contacts etc. YOU BOUGHT THE PHONE YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE not the gov or the bank or anyone else. You can even change to a non smart YOU chose the phone you deal with it.

Who does the responsibility lie with? I’m not sure we can expect our government to deal with this issue? I feel we need to learn ourselves, how to protect ourselves and our families. The saying “if in doubt don’t do it!” Delete anything that seems unfamiliar, unusual, and to good to be true. Don’t give out any personal information. Don’t allow strangers into your lives through Facebook, instagram etc…

Yes they should do more to protect everyone from scams they are getting out of control I really think more should be done to stop them

Yes! It is an irritation and being on the Do not call doesn't help.

Why do we expect the Government to take action on everything????

Yes as it's the duty of the govt to protect the people

It would be great if they did

Never even say the word "yes" on the phone unless it's a person you know.

Yes..

For sure. I had 7 calls in one day. If I don't know the number that is showing or if they have blocked there number I don't answer the phone. If it is a legitimate call they can leave a voice message.

The government is trying to get onto of these phone calls and the hackers keep changing their methods. Thanks for trying.

I hav a android smart fone. It picks up 95% of my scam callers before i can even look at the fone.

Unfortunately I doubt much can be done unless those from other Countries like India and others are harsher with penalties and confiscate what they stole from others. We donate so much to help these Countries while their citizens steal from people and ruin their lives.

yes i think the Government should do some thing about these scammers , i haven't had any scammer phone calls for a while i might have fixed the scammers myself lol.i just delete them off my phone .there are a lot of gullible people out there that will believe anything they are told. especially the elderly that is why i think the Government should do something about the scammers they need to be caught 😀they are pathetic people

I think the responsibility lies with the phone service provider not the government

No this does not need goverment at all they have to many things to do. Just keep trying to do the best you can to educate people. I know this is hard but it is the most effetive thing in my opinion that you can do . Be safe as always.

Yes they should and they should take serious action on all kinds of scam and scam artists and probably threatened them with jail time

I thought the government would have been on top of this problem already, because I am sure that they would not like the competition

first line of defence is you, before you even disclose any information, tell them you are busy, and you will get back asap, but DO NOT CALL THEM BACK. check that number and set up your phone not to accept any call or text from that number, or delete

I agree with Maria B 89860, and have nothing to add...

Friendly reminder about the old sayings "don't buy a pig in a poke", "buyer beware", :"if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is". I'll add one of my own/ Lucky dips are for children where the parent pays for it and watches carefully, if as they open it with glee, to see it's suitable for them. Individuals need to live in real time, not virtual reality and take responsibility for being alert to scams and don't brag on social media as the "have and have not's" are very much are walking around with their eyes wide open ready snatch and grab. Yes, the Government should be should take actions or phone scams and perhaps they are doing more behind the scenes as well that blabber mouths don't need to be made aware of, for myself am just hoping that this is true .. call me an optimist but sometimes just what else is there but to hope for the right things to fall into place.

Should the government take action against phone scammers. YES! Is the government going to take action against phone scammers? NO! Not when a 'common sense approach' to phone scammers will stop them in their tracks (cold) by a cell phone owner. FYI: You can buy a 'thrown-away phone'. Some 'thrown-away phones', - you can make phone calls, but you can't receive phone calls (which will stop phone scams) from anyone (due to the technologically of the phone).Edited 13-Oct-23 10:40am

If you consider a mobile phone an essential item in your life, then take responsibility for it! You are the one who opens the dodgy messages and answers the suspicious calls, NOT the government.

Absolutely

Yes, I think the government should get involved to tackle this problem.

yes