Telstra have developed new technology to block about 500,000 scam calls every day Australia wide.

Chief information security officer at Telstra, Narelle Devine, told 6PR’s Gareth Parker scam calls cost Australians nearly $48 million a year.

“We have always been blocking those, but we were doing it manually, so we were blocking around one million a month,” she said.

“We have now automated that process … and we are now blocking around 1.5 million scam calls a week.”

The sophisticated phone scams come from both international and domestic scammers.

“We are not going to catch everything though,” Ms Devine said.

“They will change their tactics as soon as they know that we are blocking that type of call.

“So it is still really important for everyone to be very vigilant, but hopefully this reduces the impacts for people.”

Click play to hear the full interview. 

(Photo: iStock by Getty Images.)