The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) and Telstra have announced that their co-developed phone scam detection technology, Scam Indicator, has been extended to landlines.

The anti-scam technology, launched late last year for mobile phone calls, indicates whether a customer may be on a call with a scammer.

Once a scam is detected, CommBank’s fraud team can apply holds, blocks and declines and proactively send real-time alerts to an impacted customer, for example via a message through the CommBank app or NetBank, to help stop the scam in real-time.

The technology uses “sophisticated algorithms to analyse secure indicators to then flag a potential scam call in real-time”, CBA said, enabling the bank to notify affected customers, and then interrupt and potentially block the scam payment, depending on the level of concern.

The addition of landlines represents a 25 per cent increase in potential coverage for Scam Indictor, CBA said.

While landline connection numbers have plummeted over the last decade (with nearly two out of three Australians making do without a landline at home), CBA cited the still overwhelming use of fixed connection phone services among older Australians – with Telstra data showing that more than 85 per cent of residential landline services are registered to Australians over the age of 60 – for its expansion of the anti-scam function.

Those aged 65 and over lost more than $121 million to scammers in 2023, more than than any other age group, according to figures from the competition regulator’s National Anti-Scam Centre, and were the only group that did not experience a decrease in reported losses during that year.

Scam Indicator technology was conceived and developed by CBA in partnership with Quantium Telstra – itself an alliance between Telstra, Australia’s biggest telco, and data science and AI developer Quantium.

“Landlines are still an essential service for many Australians, but they can also be a target for opportunistic scammers who prey on people’s trust and goodwill,” said Quantium Telstra chief executive Sandy Cameron.

“Expanding Scam Indicator to cover landlines means we’re able to help safeguard those in our community that are most vulnerable to being targeted by cybercriminals.”

CommBank general manager of group fraud James Roberts said the technology has been used recently to prevent an elderly customer from losing around $70,000 in a remote access scam.

He added that the bank and telco are both “committed to partnering and working with others in the ecosystem to improve early detection and prevention of scams”.