Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Danu Abeysuriya: Rush Digital founder on the new measures from the Government, private sector to combat text scams

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Danu Abeysuriya: Rush Digital founder on the new measures from the Government, private sector to combat text scams · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: All right, the government's announced an easy way for technology
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: companies to report scams directly to the Department of Internal Affairs.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: It means why mobile phone report junk on scam text messages,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: It will be reported straight to the department. Danowebers Earlier
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: is the founder and chiefing technology officer of Rush Digital. Hello, Dan,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: welcome to the show. You what's this? What's this new kit?
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think you know a little bit of background.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: You know, on New Zealanders it was about two hundred
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: million dollars a year and that's a rising number to
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: scams and online scams are a big part of that.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: And I think we've all probably received some form of
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: fishing text where you know, there's an unpaid poll or
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: some something, some claim about your bank and a link
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: to a dodgy u URL that, unfortunately a lot of
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: people do click on. Recently, private enterprise like Apple and Google,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: the guys that provide all our cell phones, as well
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: as sort of a connectivity company like Sparking one is it.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: They've all kind of realized that we all have to
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: work together to solve this problem because it's fairly complicated.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: And what this new feature does means that when I
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: use a symbol user identifies one of these scam texts,
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: they can easily report that as spamm to through their
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: phone and it goes for central database and the ISPs
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: like one who's ed in Spark, as well as the
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: iPhone makers and a whole bunch of other government agencies
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: get access to that information and they can do things
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: like block text messages that have the same information from
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: continuing to go out. So it's kind of crowdsourcing this
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: information to protect others.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: So you just basically have a pressure button on your
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: phone and boom, everybody gets to know, from the depund
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: of Internal Affairs to your phone provider to everybody.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it basically gets an info analysis and if it's
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: you know, effectively there's a bunch of these and yeah,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: they can be blocked. It's a really easy thing to do.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: So now I think on iOS or Apple devices you
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: just sort of delete delete a message from an unknown
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: sender and it kind of brings up the option do
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: you want to report this as junk? And that's it's
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: as simple as that for you.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: And do you think it will make a big difference.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Look, Australia is implemented a really proactive approach with
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: a sort of a department for the National Anti scam
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: or Anti crimps, online Crime Ministry or whatever. And you know,
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: in about a year this kind of approach has has
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: has seen to you know, reduce the reduce the success
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: of these things quite considerably. It's a pretty good strategy, right,
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Like you get two or three of these things to
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: users that you know are suspicious, and the next couple
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: of thousand are completely blocked. Right, So it's a it's
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: a pretty good approach, and I'm really happy it's happening.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: Actually it's a bit late, to be honest.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, everything's a bit like Dan, I thank you
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: for waking up earlier. Merry Christmas to you.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: to News Talks it Be from five am weekdays, or
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.