Telstra’s Cleaner Pipes initiative is going to keep you and your family safe online

Scam artists love some societal upset and the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly provided a window for scammers to attempt to wrest your hard earned dollars from your pocket. Telstra has announced they’re putting themselves between you and the scammer with their new cyber-security initiative they’re dubbing ‘Cleaner Pipes’.

Telstra has been trialling Cleaner Pipes for the past 12 months,  and has racked up some impressive statistics. Telstra has actioned 7000 complaints about scams, and block more more than 23 million email messages per day. Telstra also says they blocked 1.46m scam calls in the first three months of 2020 alone. 

The Cleaner Pipes initiative uses Domain Name System (DNS) filtering to pro-actively block malware from getting through to users. This has enabled Telstra to block approximately 50 COVID-19 phishing domains since March alone.

Andy Penn, CEO, Telstra, said ‘This action reduces the impact of cyber threats on millions of Telstra’s customers including stopping the theft of personal data, financial losses, fraudulent activity and users’ computers being infected with malware’.

The upscaled DNS system has also been used to block the ‘command and control communications of botnets and malware’, this has in turn led to stopping dangerous backdoor hacks and trojans.

Customers will benefit from the protection automatically with any suspicious links automatically blocked, customers will then see a warning page advising as such.

It’s a pretty good service being added on here, with a tie-in to Privacy Awareness week this week.

We’re all reliant on the internet a lot more these days, so seeing Telstra investing in this program is a positive step.