The Australian Communications and Media Authority has been directed by its Minister to introduce strict new identification measures to combat the hijacking of mobile phone numbers by fraudsters.
Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts, Paul Fletcher said fraudulent number porting affected thousands of consumers each year with average losses per victim of more than $10,000.
Mr Fletcher said the new telco regulations would mandate stronger industry-wide identity verification measures before mobile numbers could be transferred from one provider to another.
“Two-factor authentication — such as inputting a code on a website or responding to a text message — is a proven and highly effective security measure and will be required before a number can be ported,” Mr Fletcher said.
“Many Australian telcos — including Telstra, Optus and Vodafone — have already introduced stronger pre-port verification measures. However, telcos representing more than one million mobile services are yet to implement these consumer safeguards.”
He said he expected all telcos to pull their weight so that people could be confident that every telco had put in place strong verification processes to stop fraudulent mobile number porting and the devastating consequences it could have for victims.
“The entire industry needs to put in place a solution otherwise those telcos without safeguards in place will be a magnet for fraudsters,” Mr Fletcher said.
