Government blocks 2500 scam texts

More than 2500 text messages from scammers claiming to be from Centrelink, myGov and the Australian Taxation Office have been blocked under a pilot program.

The program, a collaboration between the Australian Cyber Security Centre, Services Australia, Telstra and the telecommunications sector, has been running for 12 months.

It captures and blocks phishing text messages that appear to originate from federal government agencies.

Communications Minister Paul Fletcher says the initiative is timely given myGov's traffic has increased "significantly" during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He has written to NBN Co, Australia Post and the banks to encourage them to apply the same process to block scammers.

Another 214 million scam calls have been blocked since December 2020 under the government's Reducing Scam Calls Code measures.