Telecommunications company Telstra announced it has blocked 185 million malicious texts—1,500 malicious texts blocked every minute—three months after it launched a SMS scams filter feature last April.
According to Telstra’s company blog written by chief information security officer Narelle Devine, messages blocked have included lures to install malware on the user’s device, invitations to hand over personal details to scammers, and impersonation scams requesting financial data.
The scam messages are a reminder that scammers will do anything to lure unsuspecting victims.
Devine also claimed Telstra blocked over 200 million scam calls.
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“These calls are everything from fake tech support scams, so-called ‘Wangiri’ call-back scams through to phishing campaigns,” Devin wrote.
How the technology works
In April, CEO Andy Penn detailed how the SMS filter works.
He wrote if an SMS message looks suspicious, Telstra blocks it before it reaches the user.
“Automatic machine scanning picks out suspicious content such as malicious links and combines this with other patterns and characteristics like the time, sender, the number of messages sent and the recipient,” he wrote.
Telstra also takes into consideration the users’ privacy.
“While the technology is learning, it might flag a potential suspicious message asking if it is a scam. To avoid blocking something legitimate, the new message format may be reviewed by our specialists to identify if…
