Help is on the way for those who avoid answering their phone or miss important calls due to a fear of being scammed.
A new feature from Telstra will ease these worries by giving customers greater control of which calls they answer by showing warning messages.
After receiving one of three different warning messages, customers can then choose to answer the call or let it go to voicemail.
Telstra Scam Protect has already flagged more than 10million calls since the feature was added to the service last December.
There is no charge to customers and they don’t even need to activate the feature – alerts will appear automatically at no extra cost.
Phone scams are estimated to have cost ns $141million in 2024, with impersonation scams or threats and extortion being the most common types.
Telstra research carried out last September found that 42 per cent of respondents said they are less likely to answer calls due to their fear of losing money to a scam.
It also found that 47 per cent of n women are less likely to answer unknown calls on their mobiles compared to 36 per cent of men.
Generation X are the most cautious when it comes to answering unknown calls with a 45 per cent hesitancy rate, followed by baby boomers (42 per cent), millennials (41 per cent) and Gen Z (39 per cent).
Across , Queenslanders are the most cautious, with a 47 per cent hesitancy to answer calls from unknown numbers, followed by Victorians and South ns (42 per cent), Western ns (38 per cent) and those from NSW (37 per cent).
ScamWatch said one in three ns reported scam attempts by phone.
The criminals usually claim they’re from well-known organisations such as the government, police, law firms, utility companies, banks or telecom services.
People are advised to be wary if a caller asks for personal or financial information or to allow software to be installed.
Other warning signs include the caller making threats, or if they suggest you or your accounts have been hacked, or if they mention ways to make quick and easy money.
There are three messages Telstra Scam Protect will give:
1. Warning: Potential Fraud: for calls that may be fraudulent, either calling from a spoofed number or a has a suspicious calling pattern
2. Unverified: Overseas Call: for calls appearing to be from a local mobile number, but are detected as coming from overseas and potentially suspicious.
3. Warning: Suspicious Calling Pattern: indicates a high volume of incoming traffic from a single number, which can be associated with spam.
Telstra has also offered advice on what to do if you answer a scam call.
People should hang up the phone if they are unsure of where a call is coming from.
If a caller says who they work for, people should call them back through the organisation’s official contact details on their website, and not a number they’re given.
Telstra also advised to not call back unrecognised numbers as this could cost more than $20, and be cautious of numbers beginning with 190 and international numbers.
If an SMS that looks dodgy comes in, delete it and do not reply.
If you think you have given over personal information and are concerned it may be misused, you should immediately contact your bank or card provider and ask them to stop any transactions.
Then change your passwords to your phone, computers and online accounts.