The Scam Indicator is a pilot tool we developed alongside the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) to help detect and prevent mobile phone scams for joint customers. It uses a Telstra Application Programming Interface (API) that CBA integrates into its scam detection processes to identify high-risk scam situations in real time.
The Scam Indicator enables CBA to confirm if a customer is on a mobile phone call – a prime indicator that a scam is occurring. This allows CBA the opportunity to try to contact the customer or conduct additional checks to help protect customers from transferring large amounts of money to criminals.
To protect the privacy of customers, CBA is only able to access specific data points relating to scam prevention through the API and does not have access to any contents of a communication or other underlying customer data.
Based on early simulations, the Scam Indicator has the potential to double the success rate of mobile phone scam detection and prevention, which could save vulnerable Australians from being scammed collectively up to $15-20 million per year.
Currently running as a pilot, the Scam Indicator will launch to joint customers of CBA and Telstra in the coming months.
CBA customers with an active Telstra mobile plan are automatically protected by the Scam Indicator and do not need to opt-in.
If for whatever reason you no longer want to be protected by Scam Indicator while online banking (via both a web browser and the CBA mobile app), opting- out is simple:
