Southern Phone fined $2.5 million for breaching anti-scam laws following fraud crackdown
A telecommunication firm has been slapped with the maximum fine possible for lax security that allowed scammers to con customers.
Southern Phone Company Limited has paid a $2,500,560 penalty for breaching anti-scam laws following an Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) crackdown on mobile number fraud.
Scammers were able to manipulate the telco’s systems to bypass required identity verification processes and were able to gain control of consumers’ mobile number services.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.They were able to access their bank accounts, with 20 consumers reporting combined losses of at least $393,000.
Southern Phone breached anti-scam rules on 168 occasions over an eight-month period between July 2024 and February 2025, the ACMA investigation found.
The telco had exposed people to serious financial harm and stress over a long period, the watchdog’s Samantha Yorke said.
“The penalty paid in this case is the highest imposed by the ACMA for breaches of this kind and reflects the seriousness and scale of Southern Phone’s failures,” she said.
She said the vulnerabilities in Southern Phone’s systems went undetected for more than a year.
The telco is required to conduct an independent review of its processes, regular security tests of its systems and report back to the authority.
Telcos have paid over $4.6 million in penalties under ACMA’s compliance regime to crack down on mobile phone fraud.
“This is the third enforcement action we have taken this year that has involved scammers exploiting a vulnerability in a telco’s number porting processes,” Ms Yorke added.
“Telcos need to acknowledge that this is an established technique being used by scammers and harden their defences.”
Optus, the second biggest telco in Australia, was also fined in November more than $800,000 for a similar breach coming hot on the heels of a major outage where more than 600 triple-zero calls failed to connect.
Telecommunications laws require telcos to verify the identity of people wanting to transfer their numbers to a new provider before a transfer is completed.
Australians were fleeced out of nearly $260 million in losses to scams in the first nine months of 2025, according to the National Anti-Scam Centre.
