kingdragonfly:

Wombat1: I believe it’s to stop scammers. Imagine if anybody in the world could just apply to get an aus number. I imagine it’s the same for NZ.

I'm not trying to contradict you about phishing, but the US, UK and Canada has it a whole lot worse than Australia, yet they don't have the same restrictions as Australia.

In NZ, we have a LOT of phishing SMS message from Australian numbers. In my personal experience in receiving frequent SMS scam messages, recently it's always an Australian phone number, though I'm sure they are probably spoofed.

It so bad that I've seen multiple scam warnings: in NZ if you get a SMS message from a business/government, and it's from Australia, treat it as red flag.

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Phone spam is a major problem. So big, in fact, that Americans collectively fend off over 3 billion spam calls per month. We took a deep dive into the problem in our spam call case study – where you can see detailed information about how spam affects the average smartphone owner.

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