Leading the Fight Against Fraud & Scams

Melanie Hayden, Managing Director (Truyu), x15ventures, CBA’s venture scaler

About Truyu:

• Melanie Hayden, managing director of Truyu

• Truyu is a digital identity protection tool app, part of 15 ventures, CBA’s venture scaler. Data from the session is largely sourced from CBA.

• When you sign up you go through biometric scanning, you provide your email address – Truyu then tells you if you’ve ever been in a data breach. If so, the likelihood of identity fraud is much higher.

• We can alert customers when your identity details are used. E.g. if someone sets up an account using your passport or email etc., you will get a notification.

• If that account is not yours, Truyu contacts the merchant and contacts the police to help you through the process.

Reality of scams

• Perpetrators used to steal physical documents, now identity fraud occurs digitally.

• AFR stats say Australia is losing $2.7bn in scams a year, a lot sourced from Facebook scams.

• Australia post scam – text message where if you click through to URL, they will try to scam you.

• Real life scams – people getting scammed at the door, pretending to be religious or charitable organisations. Sometimes documents are even stolen from the letter box.

• Fake data breaches – victim gets a fake text from a service provider about supposed data breach, asking recipient to go to URL.

• Deep fake AI – multinational engineering firm lost millions due to fake deepfake of CFO asking for payment transfers. A junior employee thought it was legitimate and transferred the money.

Key facts:

• 199,000 identity fraud cases were reported last year. Most people don’t report identity fraud due to a stigma.

• It often takes 13 hours of effort to restore your identity, engaging across gov departments and agencies. Reporting scams is onerous.

• Of customers so far – 54% of users who have had one instance of identity fraud have had multiple instances. It’s happened to them at least twice.

• We’re seeing 8 data breaches per customer.

• The only solution to scams is a whole of industry, cross ecosystem approach.

• CBA is founding member of Australian Financial Crimes Exchange. Banks, telcos and internet providers can more quickly report scam transactions between each other.