ITWire

According to the ACMA the scam had been running since 2009, generated some 10,000 complaints from people who had listed their phone number on the Do-Not-Call register and at its peak accounted for 50 percent of complaints about Do-Not-Call register abuses. "Australia was one of the first targets of this scam which subsequently spread to other countries," the ACMA said.

At a press conference in the US in the early hours of 4 October, Australian time, FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz announced that the FTC had secured a US court order halting the activities of six alleged tech support scammers pending further hearings, and freezing their assets.

According to the FTC, the operations – mostly based in India – targeted English-speaking consumers in the United States, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand and the UK. "Five of the six used telemarketing boiler rooms to call consumers. The sixth lured consumers by placing ads with Google which appeared when consumers searched for their computer company's tech support telephone number," the FTC said.

It has asked the court to permanently halt the scams and order the parties named to make restitution to customers.

The action appears to have made a huge impact on spam calls. Vince Humphries the ACMA's executive manager, unsolicited communications, told iTWire "Just in the last couple of weeks the number of complaints has gone down noticeably, but it is too early to attribute that to the FTC's action."

Although the announcement was made overnight the initial actions against the scammers had been taken over the last week or so, Humphries said.

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