World-wide, credit card fraud and other scams cost the public billions of dollars. While credit card fraud is the clear leader in sheer volume of money lost, "regular scams" still result in a significant amount of money being lost each year. Globally, credit card fraud resulted in losses of US$21.84 billion in 2015. The so-called "Nigerian scam", usually perpetrated via email, totalled US$12.7 billion in 2013. Overall losses are likely to be much larger however, as many scams go unreported.
While scams that come in over email are increasingly being picked up by spam filters, around 45% of scams in Australia (and likely other countries) are by phone and text message.
Email spam filters are using machine learning techniques to get better at identifying the wide range of scams that can arrive in inboxes. This is by far the most effective way of dealing with scams, as the average member of the public has been shown to be remarkably susceptible. However, very little has been done about phone and text scams. This is surprising given scammers have quite brazenly stuck to using the same number or area codes over significant periods of time.
[...] Google and Apple should, however, be able to do more independently of these agencies. With the advent of machine learning techniques being used to analyse emails, it will be also possible to apply the same technology to phone calls.
[...] The list of other scam types is fairly consistent, and so is identifiable by software interpreting the conversation in real time. Governments should apply pressure on companies like Apple and Google to tackle this problem. Until then however, it is worth using one of the third party apps (like: TrueCaller, Hiya ) to ward off scams.
Do you have suggestions on how these scams could be stopped ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 27 2017, @12:08PM
Yeah, no. There can't be a free market with a monopoly imposed (or competition prohibited) by government guns.
One of many truly free-market solutions would involve boutique providers that include additional data tied to the funding network source of the originating phone call, and offering tools to allow users to route calls making use of said data. Not entirely dissimilar from how many US Internet networks drop all traffic from China entirely.