According to research released by Roy Morgan in early March, the telecommunications sector is Australia’s least trusted, and Optus is the least trusted telco.

At the heart of the issue is the fact that the telco sector regulates itself. It writes the Telecommunications Consumer Protection (TCP) Code, which is then reviewed and approved by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA).

In the view of many consumer advocates, this is basically a rubber stamp, and we continue to be poorly served by the consumer services sector we arguably depend on the most.

Selling customers services they don’t need and probably can’t use is one major longstanding issue, and it’s one that is only getting worse according to the Fair Call Coalition, an alliance of 23 consumer and community organisations (including ����Vlog).

Unconscionable conduct

In 2024, ����Vlog reported on one particularly egregious case, in which Optus pressured around 429 consumers into paying for telco services that were grossly unsuitable for their circumstances, both financially and technologically. Many were First Nations Australians from regional and remote areas or people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Optus paid a $100 million penalty for the conduct in a case brought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. An ACCC case arising from similarly unconscionable practices resulted in a $50 million penalty for Telstra in 2021. ACMA rarely takes action on TCP Code violations, and simply reminds telcos to follow the code when it does.

ACMA agrees to replace industry code

Recent research from the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN) – which leads the Fair Call Coalition – reveals that one in five Australians have felt pressured to purchase a more expensive plan than they wanted, and over one in three have experienced unexpected changes to their contracts around terms and conditions. (The data comes from Wave 3 of , which was based on nationally representative survey responses taken between 13 February and 2 March 2026.)

For ACCAN CEO Carol Bennett, the results are further evidence that ACMA should scrap the TCP Code and directly regulate the sector, especially in problem areas such as sales practices, credit assessments, disconnections and coverage information. It’s a move that the Fair Call Coalition has repeatedly called for.

On 27 March, ACMA acceded to this longstanding demand and announced that it would replace the code with enforceable industry standards.

The change comes none too soon. The latest research “has reinforced that trust in this sector is in the doldrums and consumer wellbeing is at threat. Consumers feeling unprotected plays no small part in this result,” Bennett says.

Telcos have not learned their lessons

The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman’s 2024–25 annual report revealed that hardship complaints to the ombudsman went up 46% compared to the previous 12 months. Many of these complaints would have stemmed from a gaping hole in the TCP Code around sales and credit assessment practices. The industry-written code lacks enforceable standards in these areas. Whether ACMA’s new enforceable standards will improve matters remains to be seen.

Managing director of Bush Money Mob Alan Gray says ACCAN’s consumer sentiment data “aligns exactly with what our remote Aboriginal clients are experiencing around the Outback. Remote financial counsellors know that large telcos simply have not learned the lessons [from the Optus and Telstra cases].”

Jillian Williams, advocacy manager at the Indigenous Consumer Assistance Network, says the advocacy group “has been supporting hundreds of people who have experienced significant loss and stress as a result of telco misconduct that was allowed to occur over many years”.

“A strong and enforceable code, delivering stronger consumer protections, could have prevented much of the harm our service has seen,” she adds.

ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin says the regulator already enforces industry standards for complaint handling,��financial hardship obligations and protections for people experiencing domestic and family violence.

But the TCP Code, which will remain in effect until it formally retired at a date yet to be determined, leaves too much room for harm.

“Now is the time to move the remaining consumer protections into direct regulation so that expectations are consistent, obligations are clear and are backed by stronger and more immediately available enforcement powers for the regulator,” O’Loughlin says.

“Telco consumers must have confidence that selling practices are fair and that they will not be sold services they cannot afford, do not deliver the service for which they paid or the coverage they have been promised.”

The post Telco upselling and mis-selling going from bad to worse appeared first on ����Vlog.

An artificial intelligence (AI) tool developed by Elon Musk’s company xAI was recently banned in Indonesia and Malaysia and has raised serious concerns globally. It’s called Grok, and it gives users the capability to make highly sexualised images of people that look disturbingly real. 

As Indonesia’s Communication and Digital Affairs Minister Meutya Hafid recently put it, “The government sees non-consensual sexual deepfakes as a serious violation of human rights, dignity and the safety of citizens in the digital space.”

Britain’s media regulator, Ofcom, realeased a statement that says, “There have been deeply concerning reports of the Grok AI chatbot account on X being used to create and share undressed images of people – which may amount to intimate image abuse or pornography – and sexualised images of children that may amount to child sexual abuse material.”

Grok, which is free to X users who pay for a subscription, was launched in 2023, but in 2024 an image generator feature was added that included something called ‘spicy mode’, which can generate pornographic content.

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner says the agency “has seen a recent increase from almost none to several reports over the past couple of weeks relating to the use of Grok to generate sexualised or exploitative imagery”, adding that it “will use its powers, including removal notices, where appropriate and where material meets the relevant thresholds defined in the Online Safety Act”.

Malicious content made easier

Abhinav Dhall, an associate professor at Monash University’s Department of Data Science and AI, says Grok has put powerful new technology into the hands of wrongdoers.

“Grok has made it easier to produce malicious content because it is directly integrated into X, so anyone can quickly tag it and request image edits. As it is so well integrated into the platform, the edited outputs also appear directly within the same public thread, which increases the visibility and reach of manipulated images”, Dhall says, adding that in many cases “the original poster may not even have the rights to the image they are uploading on the platform, which can make it easier for the edits to become potentially defamatory or unsafe”.

Dhall says Grok users should take steps to avoid images falling into the wrong hands.

“To reduce the risk of personal images being used to generate malicious content, users should be careful about posting clear, front-facing photos of their face, and should check and tighten privacy settings on their social media platforms,” Dhall says.

“It is also important to avoid posting children’s photos publicly. If you suspect your images have been misused, reverse image search can be applied to detect AI-generated content, and fake or harmful content should be reported to the relevant platforms as quickly as possible.”

X said in a previous statement that it removes illegal content from its platform including child abuse material and suspends the accounts of people who post it.

Musk has posted comments on the Grok backlash, saying critics of X “just want to suppress free speech”. In an X post on 15 January he said, “Grok is supposed [to] allow upper body nudity of imaginary adult humans (not real ones) consistent with what can be seen in R-rated movies on Apple TV.”

In a more recent announcement on X the company said “we have implemented technological measures to prevent the Grok account from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing” in jurisdictions where this is illegal.

But it remains unclear how the company will block certain locations from using this functionality or which locations they may be.

Will mandatory codes stop the deepfakes?

On 9 March 2026, mandatory codes come into effect in Australia which impose new obligations on AI services to limit children’s access to sexually explicit content as well as to violent material and content related to self-harm and suicide. But enforcing such codes on mammoth AI companies based in the US and other countries has proven to be a tall order for Australian regulators.

Abhinav Dhall stops short of recommending that Grok be banned in Australia, saying it’s a matter of enforcing the current rules and compelling tech companies to stop harmful content.

“Australia already has laws covering image-based abuse, so the focus should be on making the penalties clear and ensuring it is easy for victims to report abuse and have content removed quickly,” Dhall says. “At the same time, social media platforms should be required to implement stronger guardrails to stop harmful edits before they spread.”

Meanwhile, amid the outcry around the world about sexualised deepfakes, in a speech given at Musk’s company SpaceX, in South Texas, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently said that the Pentagon will embrace Grok along with Google’s generative AI engine. 

The post What is Grok and should Australia be blocking it? appeared first on ����Vlog.

It may seem counterintuitive, perhaps even nonsensical, but Australia’s Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) currently has no power to help consumers with complaints about the world’s tech giants, such as Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft and Hubbl.

And yet 1537 people have come to the TIO since 2023 with complaints about these omnipresent digital platforms, and complaints to the TIO have been rising year on year.

They are the same sort of complaints the TIO receives about the telcos it oversees, such as Telstra and Optus. They’re mainly about fees and charges, service breakdowns, and accounts being blocked. Meanwhile, the TIO makes clear on its website that it only handles complaints about internet and phone services. ����Vlog has also heard from many people who’ve been ill-served by a digital platform.

For Ombudsman Cynthia Gebert, it’s a case of regulation falling behind the modern day realities of the digital world.

“It’s heartbreaking telling people that, unlike issues with telco providers, we don’t have the power to help resolve their digital platform disputes – no one does,” Gebert says.

“When things go wrong online, the cost is profound: people and small businesses are losing time and money. People are struggling to solve their complaints directly, coming up against unhelpful chatbots and automated emails – so they turn to us.”

TIO wants to become the Communications Ombudsman

According to the final report of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Digital Platform Services Inquiry published earlier this year, nearly three out of four Australians think it should be easier to lodge a complaint about a digital platform, and over eight out of ten of us think we need an independent body in Australia to handle such complaints.

Gebert wholeheartedly agrees, which is why the TIO is calling on the federal government to change its name to the Communications Ombudsman and to add digital platforms to its remit.

“When someone loses access to their telco service, we work with the consumer and the company to resolve the issue. But when someone is accidentally locked out of their social media or cloud storage account, and the platform is not responding, there’s nowhere for them to go,” Gebert says.

The TIO breaks down digital services complaints it receives into two categories, transactional and social disputes. Most of them (78%) fall into the former and involve fees and charges, account access, and privacy breaches. But social disputes can involve thornier issues such as offensive or illegal material, misinformation and harassment. The TIO has to tell these people that it can’t help, and that no other independent body in Australia can either.

“Using services provided by big digital platforms has become unavoidable in modern life, but what happens when something goes wrong? Consumers need a well-resourced external dispute resolution body to resolve consumer complaints and identify systemic issues,” says ����Vlog director of campaigns and communications Andy Kelly.

“Appropriate internal dispute resolution processes should also be established and digital platforms should take a proactive approach to identifying complaints, rather than making consumers jump through hoops just to get a response.”

In a recent report on the issue, the TIO cites a number of chilling cases in which people’s lives have been upended due to an issue with their digital services provider, ranging from businesses not being able to continue functioning to accounts accidentally being deleted along with all the purchased digital goods.

Complaints to the digital platforms themselves are mostly exercises in frustration that rarely lead to an acceptable resolution. 

“We are calling for the Australian Government to expand the TIO to become the Communications Ombudsman. To support government reforms such as the under 16s social media ban and digital duty of care. It’s more important than ever that people have appeal rights when digital platforms get things wrong,” Gebert says.

The post Why your complaints about Meta and Google aren’t being resolved appeared first on ����Vlog.

The steady creep of dark patterns into our daily online lives has worn down our capacity to resist, to the point where they’re making our choices for us.��

That’s the premise of a new report from the Consumer Policy Research Centre (CPRC) – Made to Manipulate – which argues that Australians are particularly vulnerable to these insidious online traps.��

The report concludes it’s time for regulators to step in and do more.��

Dark patterns are where you’re fooled or forced into making selections when transacting online, and they come in many forms. They can make it impossible to unsubscribe from a service, or they might pre-activate unwanted options that you then have to de-select – if you happen to notice.��

It’s an unfair business practice that hijacks your online journey and takes you to places you didn’t intend to go. With each hard-sell pop-up or default setting, the business serves its own interests at your expense.��

One example is the multi-layered manipulations of the Derila pillows website, which ����Vlog alerted consumers about last year.

For Chandni Gupta, the report’s author and deputy CEO and digital policy director at the CPRC, the central question is whether dark patterns have usurped our online agency. Have we become puppets, with the platform masters pulling the strings?  

In search of a global perspective on the issue, Gupta travelled to seven countries over seven weeks and spoke with 70 digital rights experts across 25 organisations. This quest for a holistic view was sponsored by the Australian branch of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust, which awarded Gupta a fellowship.��

For Gupta, dark patterns aren’t just a nuisance anymore; they’ve become a threat to our mental health.��

“Dark patterns take a cumulative toll,” Gupta tells ����Vlog. “They exploit our attention in order to bring on fatigue and stress.��

“They’re designed to wear us down, and they leave people in a really unfair space where everything is on them to navigate a digital economy that was never designed with them in mind at all.” 

Australians are disproportionately affected

In October last year, the federal government vowed to ban unfair business practices, including the use of dark patterns. This crucial update to consumer law is expected to happen before mid-year, but for the time being we remain at the mercy of tricks such as:

• scarcity cues – telling us there’s a limited supply or time to act
• false hierarchies – making the business’s preferred choice more prominent in size, placement or colour)
• nagging – pop-ups urging you to do what the business wants 
• hidden costs – where new charges appear at the final stages of payment.��

All of this is perfectly legal in Australia at the moment, but it’s a different story in many other countries, Gupta reports.��

“Other jurisdictions have had unfair trading laws for decades. And they’ve applied a very general prohibition in order to capture emerging issues, and dark patterns is one of them.” 

The most consequential piece of digital legislation to come into play recently is probably the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which defines prohibited dark patterns as “practices that materially distort or impair, either on purpose or in effect, the ability of recipients of the service to make autonomous and informed choices or decisions”. (The DSA came into effect in October 2022, but most platforms were given until February 2024 to comply.) It’s a step forward, at least for Europeans.��

“We have this situation where you could be using the same product on the same platform through the same provider, but someone in Melbourne is going to be having a far different experience than someone in Munich,” says Gupta.��

“Australians aren’t protected by the kinds of measures that other jurisdictions take for granted.”

Enforcing data disgorgement

Gupta advances a number of ideas in the report to counteract online manipulation, one of which is to compel digital services providers to not only pay fines for breaking the rules (in jurisdictions where they face fines) but to also surrender the offending data.

“The model we’ve got is that, if a business is found to be doing something that’s prohibited, they might get a civil penalty and potentially some reputational damage. However, there is nothing stopping them from continuing to benefit from the data they’ve collected as a result of that prohibited practice.” 

‘Data disgorgement’ is necessary because penalties have become the accepted cost of doing business rather than a disincentive to misbehaviour.��

Gupta cites the case of Meta reportedly setting aside €3 billion ($5.75 billion) just to pay fines for violating the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, which came into effect in 2018.��

An EU ‘Digital Fairness Fitness Check’ in October 2024 revealed that unfair business practices such as dark patterns were costing EU consumers at least €7.9 billion ($13.8 billion) a year. Meanwhile, the cost to businesses of complying with legislation designed to eradicate them was around €737 million.��

Regulators under-resourced 

The lopsided numbers speak to the larger issue of the power imbalance between regulators and the major tech companies, an imbalance that’s especially acute in Australia.�� 

“You often have a regulator on a shoestring budget trying to take on a business with very deep pockets,” says Gupta.

“And what we need to do is uplift the capacity and capability of regulators so that they have the tools and resources to be able to take on the market that they’re actually overseeing.”

She recommends ‘babysitting fees’ where they don’t already exist – or continual contributions from big tech companies to the regulators that oversee them.��

It’s a model that’s in place in Australia under financial regulation, but tech companies operating here face no such obligations.��

In the EU, by contrast, big tech businesses have to pay supervisory fees to regulators as stipulated in the Digital Services Act.�� 

Fueling cognitive overload 

Dark patterns are doing what businesses want them to do. An experiment conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2024 involving 35,000 participants across 20 countries showed that dark patterns have a major influence on user’s online decisions, pushing platform users to spend more money.

What the creators of dark patterns seem to be trying to do is bring about cognitive overload, wearing us down mentally until we no longer resist their manipulations.��

“I think we are at a tipping point where dark patterns are becoming very much the norm of online experience,” Gupta says.��

“There are likely younger generations who have never experienced the online world without them. And it is very much up to you as an individual to constantly push against that wave.” 

At the moment, the wave seems to be winning. CPRC research shows it would take approximately 30 minutes each day for Australians to adjust privacy settings on websites and apps and take other steps to evade the dark patterns that have been set.��

And the trend line is moving in the wrong direction. With artificial intelligence increasingly pulling the strings, the dark patterns will only get darker.��

The post How ‘dark patterns’ are affecting your freedom of choice online appeared first on ����Vlog.

While less people seem to be falling for scams these days, plenty of money is still being spirited away by scammers – including ones who manage to convince victims they’re in the midst of a relationship with a new romantic partner.�� 

Aside from investment scams, people lost more money to romance scams than any other type in 2024, when over $23 million was stolen from lovelorn people across Australia.

Western Australia, where victims lost nearly $5 million last year, was especially hard hit. Though the number of romance scams reported to WA Consumer Protection fell slightly compared to 2023, victims lost more money last year.

“An average loss of over $87,000 and in one case nearly $800,000 – that’s the devastating reality of romance scams in 2024,” says WA Consumer Protection commissioner Trish Blake. “These staggering figures represent a lifetime of savings for many and can be financially crippling.”

Blake says advances in Artificial Intelligence likely have something to do with this. It’s getting harder and harder to tell what’s real and what’s not on the internet.

“Deepfake technology is allowing scammers to create highly realistic videos, impersonating fabricated love interests and exploiting the images of real people in the process,” Blake says. “That’s why our advice remains that unless you can meet in person, you should proceed with extreme caution, as you can’t always trust what you see in video calls or hear over the phone.”

Former detective sets up anti-scam service

Kylee Dennis, a former police detective who specialised in intelligence operations, has a personal stake in helping people avoid romance scams. Her mum fell prey to one a couple of years ago and lost around $10,000. The experience spurred Dennis to found a private investigative service called , which assists in vetting online suitors as well as helping people recover from romance scams.

“My mum has been single for over 20 years and when she went online dating, she did it in secret,” Dennis tells ����Vlog.

Her would-be romantic partner claimed to be a businessman who lived in Sydney’s Darling Harbour and was working in Turkey on an energy project. At some point he started asking Dennis’s mum to send money.

“Mum spent six months talking to him while he was over there, supposedly finalising this contract. I was very excited for her. I thought, ‘this is great, she found herself somebody’.”

But when her mum showed Dennis some photos of her new love interest, alarm bells went off. For one thing, the man looked notably younger than his claimed age of 69.

“So I went off and did a bit of digging, and I was able to identify that the photos actually belonged to a real estate agent in California. And that the real estate agent wasn’t in Turkey and his name wasn’t Donald and he wasn’t single,” Dennis says.

She gently let her mum know that the gentleman from Sydney Harbour wasn’t who he said he was. “She was thinking that she was going to have this amazing life with him, because he was very persuasive. Romance scammers are very skilled in their language.” 

Telltale signs can be hard to spot

Dennis says she uses a number of technology tools in her private investigative business that can’t be accessed for free, since the standard free technique of doing a reverse search of an image on Google – while always worth a try – doesn’t always expose a scam. In her mum’s case, she finally identified the original photos on an Instagram page.��

The continuing rise of deepfake technology has only made matters worse, Dennis says.��

“We’ve got AI-driven documentation, fake passports, fake driver’s licences, fake court documents, fake identification badges, voice cloning, people reporting themselves to be in the military. We’ve got Chat GPT making it easier for criminals to break down language barriers. I’ve seen authentic-looking Aussie passports, but when you go through and break down simple things like the font and the font sizes and certain aspects of the photograph you can see that it’s a fake document.”

Dennis applauds the efforts of Telcos such as Optus, which reports that it blocked over 25 million scam calls and over 11 million scam texts in the last three months of 2024. Telcos as a whole say they’ve blocked more than 2.2 billion scam calls since December 2020 and more than 788 million scam SMS texts since July 2022, the Australian Communications and Media Authority reported in November last year.��

Dennis urges romance scam victims to report the experience but believes that most don’t due to embarrassment and shame – two emotions that she wants to remove entirely from the picture. Any discussion of romance scams – or how to prevent one – should take place in a shame-free environment, she says.��

To prevent a romance scam, her business begins by focusing on a very clear task.��

“I can tell you whether the person that you are looking at is who they are reporting themselves to be,” Dennis says. “In relation to the next step of handing over money, well, I would always tell people not to do that.” 

Tips to help you spot and avoid falling for a romance scam

WA Consumer Protection offers some sound guidance:

• Review your new romantic interest’s LinkedIn or Facebook profiles, including checking friends and followers to make sure they are who they say they are.
• Reverse search their profile pictures, or photos they have shared. You can do this on Google’s search page by clicking on the “search by image” icon in the search bar. If it’s an image of a person with another name, discontinue communicating and report the probable scam.
• Be careful about how you share your own profile across social media channels – scammers may use personal information to target you.
• Never share personal identification documents with someone online, such as a driver’s licence, passport, banking or credit card details.
• Never share explicit or intimate images with someone who might be a scammer, as scammers can find ways of using them to their advantage.
• Insist on meeting your new online love interest in person before taking the relationship further.

The post AI-driven romance scams likely leading to higher losses appeared first on ����Vlog.

She had depended on the Meta platform to stay connected to a number of important causes in her life, including groups dedicated to helping people find lost pets and gifting groups that combined resources to give to charities. 

She hadn’t fully considered how central Facebook had become to her everyday interactions, or that the community feeling it engendered could disappear in an instant. 

She thinks the suspension may have happened because she replied to a comment on one of the lost pet groups that she was sure had been left by a scammer. But she’s accepted the fact that she’ll never really know. What she is sure about is that her Facebook activities had never violated Meta’s policies. 

Her response to the probable scammer was: “This is a group for pets, your comment is inappropriate”. 

I think it said something like ‘against our advertising standards’, which confused me, because I wasn’t advertising anything

Facebook user Micki Websdane

“As soon as I typed that, my mobile phone got a message that took up the entire screen saying I have been suspended for 180 days. And then something flashed past very quickly that I could barely read. I think it said something like ‘against our advertising standards’, which confused me, because I wasn’t advertising anything. I just didn’t know what I had done wrong.”

Micki and her husband exchanged various theories about what may have happened, including one that had the scammer reporting her to Facebook after she replied to the post. 

“Either way, it had happened, and there was nothing I could do except appeal,” Micki says. She did so. and received a message saying Meta would respond in 24 hours. 

Read more: 

Account reinstated, but not really 

She waited the 24 hours and logged back on. To her considerable relief, she saw that her account had been reinstated without restrictions. Or had it? 

It was basically just as bad as not being able to post. I couldn’t interact with my community

“I was so happy for the rest of the day because I could message people. But when they responded, I couldn’t reply back. I got a little red ring around my comment that said ‘failed to post’. I had gifted people things and I had to reply to them and I couldn’t because I was blocked. It created a lot of stress for me. I could post again, but whatever the flaw was that stopped me from replying, it was basically just as bad as not being able to post. I couldn’t interact with my community.” 

Micki’s Facebook frustration story is one of many.

The process of reinstating your Facebook or Instagram account after an unwarranted suspension can be mysterious and confusing.

Not an isolated case 

In response to a ����Vlog Community callout on this issue, we heard back from a number of Meta platform users who’ve had their accounts suspended for reasons that eluded them. 

One member says, “Two weeks ago, I was suspended and given six months to appeal. I did so immediately and have heard nothing.” 

The member was part of a Facebook group dedicated to cars. The possible infraction? Someone had posted a screenshot of an ad for a Ford Escort, highlighting the vehicle. 

Two weeks ago, I was suspended and given six months to appeal. I did so immediately and have heard nothing

Another community member who had faced multiple suspensions is now in a stalemate with the company. “There is a link to find out why my account will be deleted, but when I click on the link it won’t let me proceed without sending them my passport or licence to verify my identity. Sorry, but I am not doing that. I do not trust them with these documents.”

We also heard from Instagram users whose accounts had been hacked and whose attempts to contact Meta got them nowhere. 

Read more: 

An example of unfair trading

����Vlog has flagged a business being uncontactable as an example of unfair trading, a term that includes a range of tactics that the . While you may not pay money for your Meta account, the company is extracting value from you in the form of your personal data – which means it should be obligated to have a certain level of customer service. 

In early January, Meta announced it was discontinuing its third-party fact-checking program, starting in the US. In a statement, the company said its content management systems “have expanded over time to the point where we are making too many mistakes, frustrating our users and too often getting in the way of the free expression we set out to enable. Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail’, and we are often too slow to respond when they do.”

Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in ‘Facebook jail’

Meta company statement

It remains to be seen how Meta’s new “Community Notes” program – which will effectively crowdsource content moderation from platform users – will affect unwarranted Facebook suspensions. Or the extent to which it will allow accounts that actually should be suspended to continue. 

Read more: 

‘So much mental stress’

“The worst thing about it was I didn’t know when it would come back, if it would come back, and how to contact Facebook. I must have sent hundreds of messages saying ‘I still can’t reply’,” Micki says. 

They encourage us to become part of these communities and then, when these glitches happen, they cut us off

Facebook user Micki Websdane

About two weeks later, Micki’s reply function started working again – just as mysteriously as it had stopped. But she is still upset about the whole experience. 

“They encourage us to become part of these communities and then, when these glitches happen, they cut us off and it causes so much mental stress.” 

����Vlog contacted Meta multiple times to give the company a right of reply to this article. Not surprisingly, we never heard back. 

The post Blocked: Facebook and Instagram users frustrated by account shutdowns  appeared first on ����Vlog.

But for a country of around 25 million, the raw numbers remain disturbingly high – we’re still getting taken in on a grand scale.��Australians lodged 67,116 reports with Scamwatch just in the final quarter of 2023, recording losses of $82.1 million.

And these are only the reported losses, which is likely just a fraction of how much Australians have relinquished to the shadow world of faceless criminals in recent months.��Of the $3.1 billion in scam losses reported to eight organisations in 2022, for instance, only $569.5 million were reported to Scamwatch.

So, while the news of a reduction in reported losses may be encouraging, it is incomplete. And the scammers may just be hiding out elsewhere.

Scammers turning to social media 

The big outtake from the latest NASC report is how scammers have further commandeered our social media platforms. It appears to be the new frontier.

Of the $82.1 million in stolen funds reported to Scamwatch from October through December 2023, $15.9 million was linked to scams that started on digital platforms – which overwhelmingly means Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) and Google.

But it’s mostly Meta.

The financial losses reported to Scamwatch in all of 2023 – that were engineered by scammers who infiltrated social media sites – amounted to $95 million, a 249% increase compared to 2020. And 76% of those losses happened because victims clicked on a scam ad on a Meta-owned platform.

“It’s disappointing that digital platforms are still refusing to come to the table to stop scammers exploiting their tools to steal from people,” says ����Vlog senior campaigns and policy adviser, Alex Soderlund.

The platforms have made promises about preventing scammers from hijacking their sites in recent years, but the hijacking continues.

‘A perverse incentive’ 

In September 2023 we published the results of an investigation that uncovered numerous scam ads impersonating some of Australia’s most popular retailers, including Country Road, Peter Alexander, Seed Heritage, Decjuba, Lorna Jane, Sportsgirl and Kathmandu.

Who let the scammers in? None other than Google, Facebook and Instagram.

Soderlund says it’s time for the platforms to find a way to quit doing business with criminals. “Big tech companies have a perverse incentive not to act on scams because they generate advertising revenue, so it’s clear that only strong mandatory rules to prevent scams developed and enforced by a regulator will result in any meaningful change for consumers.”  

The post Social media scam losses go from bad to worse appeared first on ����Vlog.

On this page:

• How phone-based language learning works
• Duolingo
• Memrise
• Babbel
• Lingvist
• Lingopie
• Specialist language apps

For anyone over 40, learning a language is likely to bring back traumatic memories of attempting to conjugate verbs in a classroom. Or perhaps spending countless hours listening to crackly cassettes and poring over optimistically titled tomes such as Speak Swedish in 30 Days.

Mastering a foreign language still remains a major undertaking, but thanks to technological advances, learning another language as an adult is now cheaper and easier.

The rise of the machine translators

The “Big Bang” of language translation technology was the launch of in 2006. That tech has evolved over the years and currently relies on a “neural machine translation engine” to generate reasonably accurate translations.��

But the “machine translators” now in wide use – Google Translate and its competitors such as Microsoft Translator, as well as portable translation devices – are far from infallible.

It’s a similar story with language learning apps. They can be a boon for beginners and those with some proficiency who want to discover or be reacquainted with the building blocks of a language. But if you aspire to become fluent in a language and understand its nuances, you’ll usually have to converse at length with native speakers.

, a free app with a paid premium version available, can match you up with someone who wants to practise their English while you, in turn, attempt to speak their native tongue.

How phone-based language learning works

The idea with language learning apps is to put in a small amount of effort every day, or almost every day, and slowly but steadily improve. The apps provide exercises that typically take 5–15 minutes to complete. It’s up to you how many exercises you undertake in any one sitting, but it seems most people don’t spend more than 20 minutes a day using these apps.

All the apps we tried were simple to use. Once you’ve downloaded and installed an app, you’ll usually be asked to rate your level of fluency or invited to do a brief test to determine your proficiency. Then you’ll be guided to the appropriate exercises.

Most apps offer a free trial but often require setting up an account and providing payment details upfront (you just need to remember to cancel your subscription quickly if you’re not impressed with what’s on offer). Each app usually has a unique selling point, so you’re likely to find some are a better fit for your learning style than others.

Duolingo

• Available: Android, iOS.
• Price: Free, with a premium version available.
• Point of difference: All the standard exercises, none of the cost.

advertises itself as “the world’s best way to learn a language”. That’s debatable, but with over 500 million registered users, it’s undoubtedly the most popular. The app is owned by an American educational technology company and offers courses in 43 languages.

Like most language apps, Duolingo has a freemium model, meaning there’s a free version and a paid premium version that offers extra features, an ad-free experience, or both. But unlike most of its competitors, Duolingo gives away almost everything for free and makes most of its money from advertising.��

Super Duolingo, which starts at $10.83 a month, offers an ad-free experience and a few extra features. But most users won’t need the upgrade and it’s not required to access good stuff.

Duolingo has gamified language learning. A friendly cartoon owl guides you through exercises and when you get questions right, cartoon characters do a jig and say things like “Good job!”.

Users are encouraged to unlock levels, win gems and hearts (hearts can be used to purchase special in-app features and items), and not break a streak of daily studying.��This can make you feel like you’re using an app aimed at a 10-year-old, but the constant positive feedback can also be encouraging.

Duolingo attracts criticism for not offering much to intermediate and advanced learners, but if you just want to learn the basics and don’t want to incur any expense doing so, you’ve got nothing to lose by giving it a go.

Memrise

• Available: Android, iOS.
• Price: Free, with a premium version available.��
• Point of difference: A handy resource for beginners.

Like Duolingo, has a premium option (Memrise Pro, $21.99 a month) available but gives away most of its content for free. Unlike Duolingo, Memrise doesn’t run ads, and its offering reflects this lack of revenue. Many people have found Memrise to be a helpful study aid, but you shouldn’t expect anything too fancy.��

There’s a library of over 30,000 videos of native speakers talking in 23 languages, as well as “Membot”, an “AI language partner built using GPT-3 technology”.

Babbel

• ������������������:��Android, iOS.
• Price: $9.99–12.99 a month.��
• Main selling point: Structured, comprehensive learning.��

requires a financial commitment early on. After a week-long trial, you need to decide whether you like the app enough to subscribe. The shorter the period you sign up for, the higher the monthly fee.

While on the free trial, you can only do one elementary lesson. The French one we tried included how to pronounce, spell and conversationally deploy “Bonjour”,��“Ça va?”, and “Au revoir”.��

But many apps keep their best content and features behind a paywall, so Babbel can’t be judged too harshly for charging users early on. The question is whether subscribers are getting value for money.

Babbel is a German company that focuses on European languages. If you’re self-motivated enough to use a language learning app that has minimal gamification and that boasts plenty of old-school grammar lessons and pronunciation exercises, you may find Babbel worth investing in.��

It’s remarkably popular given its paywall and the relatively small number of languages it offers (14), with over 10 million people reportedly having subscribed to it since it launched.��

Babbel may be for you if you’re serious enough about your language studies to want access to content for intermediate and advanced learners. But if you’re a beginner, similar exercises are readily available elsewhere for free.��  

Lingvist

• ������������������:��Android, iOS.
• Price: $14.49 a month.��
• Main selling point: No grammar lessons.

Native speakers of a language typically have a vocabulary of 15,000–30,000 words. However, getting by in a language is possible if you can memorise approximately 800–1000 of its most commonly used words.

has taken this concept and run with it. It seeks to familiarise users with the most important words (“man”, “woman”, “be”, “have”, etc) in a language by having them guess what word fits in a sentence. If you don’t supply the correct answer, it flashes up for a few seconds and you get another chance to use it appropriately.

The app is aimed at English speakers aspiring to learn Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, Estonian, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian or Spanish (Latin American or European). It has a no-frills design, but it gets the job done.��

An introductory test determines how many words you already know (771 out of the 5091 French words the app teaches, in our case) and then directs you to modules with titles such as “A weekend in Paris”, “Food”, and “The family”. To access those modules, you must hand over your credit card details, though there is a 14-day free trial.

A pro and a con of Lingvist is that it doesn’t teach grammar, which is often the most frustrating aspect of learning a language. If you’re unable or unwilling to devote lots of time and effort to learning to speak a language correctly but want to make yourself understood when looking for a toilet or buying a bus ticket, Lingvist might be the app for you.

Lingopie

• Available: Android, iOS.
• Price: $17.99 a month.
• Main selling point: Pop culture-based learning.

Children and even some adults can sometimes learn a new language simply by consuming popular culture. So, it’s unsurprising some apps attempt to make achieving fluency relatively painless by allowing users to watch movies and TV series and listen to songs.��

Like many of its competitors, only caters to those wanting to learn one of a handful of widely spoken languages – English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, in this case.

The other downside of Lingopie is that users are likely to experience sensory overload from watching what is unfolding on the screen while simultaneously attempting to read the comprehensive English and foreign language subtitles. If our experience is anything to go by, most users will have to keep pausing the show and scrutinising the subtitles.��

This soon becomes as laborious as conventional language learning exercises. And given they have ready access to subtitled foreign language films and TV programs via SBS and streaming services, Australians might find it hard to justify the cost.

Specialist language apps

Want to speak Swahili, communicate better with a deaf colleague, or play a part in keeping First Nations languages alive?   

Apps for obscure languages 

For practical and commercial reasons, language learning apps focus on languages many people want to learn. But some do offer lesser-spoken languages.��

For example, ($20.95 a month) offers 51 languages, including Albanian, Armenian, Haitian Creole, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Romanian and Vietnamese. Likewise, ($7.99 a month) offers everything from Cherokee to Scottish Gaelic.

Apps for First Nations languages

Australia is home to a wealth of First Nations cultures and languages. If you’re interested in learning one of these languages, there are plenty of apps to choose from.

There isn’t space to list them all here, but you might want to start by checking out (free, covers “over 100” First Nations languages from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US) or (free, covers six languages spoken in New South Wales – Bundjalung, Gumbaynggirr, Gamilaraay, Murrawarri, Paakantji and Wiradjuri).

Apps for sign language 

Sign languages, like conventional ones, differ from nation to nation and sometimes even region to region. Some mainstream language learning apps offer sign language lessons, but they’re unlikely to be in Auslan, the sign language used by Australians.��

Auslan language learning apps include (free), (one-time payment of $2.99) and (free), among others.

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When Jim received a notification from iiNet that his email service would be shut down in six weeks, it was just about the last thing he wanted to hear.��

He and his family were about to go on holiday, so he really had just two weeks to go into administrative overdrive before his world descended into chaos.��

For those who haven’t heard, TPG Telecom has done the unthinkable and is shutting down email service across all its brands, which include iiNet, Internode, and Westnet.��

The nightmare for Jim was trying to figure out his next move. He describes iiNet’s notification timeline as “woefully inadequate”.��

“I found it even more galling because we’ve been long term customers,” Jim says. “Up until this point, every time I phoned them up, you get this bloody platitude, ‘we see you’ve been a customer for 16 years, and we’re so grateful’, and then they turn around and go, by the way your email’s dead in six weeks.”

What are the options for customers with a TPG email?

TPG has essentially given its customers an ultimatum: transfer your current email service to The Messaging Company or get a new email address.

Getting a new email address would mean losing all your TPG emails and having to update all your logins and contacts.��

Transferring your service to The Messaging Company means you can keep your email address, but you’ll need to start paying for the service in September 2024, and TPG isn’t saying what the costs will be.��

Jim decided to give iiNet the flick and accept the ordeal to come.��

“You can’t just sort of ring up and say, hey guys, I’ve changed my email. There’s a whole process involved. First you have to identify every website where you’ve used your email as a user ID, which is typically most of them,” Jim says.��

Security protocols make the process even harder, especially with government websites such as MyGov and the ATO.��

Jim estimates that he and his wife have spent several hours dealing with the email change so far, and the process continues.

What happens if you opt for The Messaging Company

TPG tells ����Vlog that the company has “worked closely with The Messaging Company to make this transition as simple and smooth as possible”.��

If you opt in to the new email provider, your emails, contacts, and calendar events will be transferred across, TPG says, “providing customers another 12 months of free access to decide if this is a service they wish to retain”.��

It’s too soon to know whether The Messaging Company will provide quality service. But Andrew Williams, CEO of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), says TPG would have taken steps to ensure that it doesn’t jeopardise its customer base.��

“They would not go down this path lightly. They wouldn’t choose a third party provider without a significant amount of diligence,” says Williams. “I think the reputational harm if TPG gets this wrong is quite significant.”

Customers say it’s not a fair choice

TPG customer David says “it’s basically a case of they’ve got a gun to your head. Pay up or all your data gets deleted.”

“They won’t tell you what the charge will be. They wash their hands of you completely, push [you] on to this new service and absolve themselves of responsibility.” 

He’s particularly chagrined that his TPG contract included email service, but the company has unilaterally revoked it.�� 

����Vlog has heard from several other customers of TPG brands who are grappling with the impending cancellation of their email accounts.��

Ditching your ISP-linked email could be a good thing 

While there’s no doubt that having your email account yanked out from underneath you with little notice is a massive hassle, there may be an upside. Advocates say that having your email service married to your internet service provider was never a good idea.��

Williams explains that this move provides the perfect opportunity for some digital house cleaning for many consumers.��

“I’d say that there are more positives than negatives to this move by TPG. Having your email locked into a provider makes it very difficult for consumers to change providers.” 

Generic emails such as Gmail, Hotmail or Outlook give consumers more flexibility, says Williams.��

“Then the providers have to come up with other ways to retain their customers, which is generally customer service, pricing and other services, which I think is a real positive.” 

The Messaging Company will be independent of TPG, and customers can bail out without changing ISPs. If in doubt, customers should seek more information from TPG, Williams says.��

Or, you can grit your teeth and get a new email address.��

Either way, this may be the prompt many TPG customers need to switch to a better internet service provider, and having an email address that is not tethered to your ISP means you can continue to switch to get the best pricing and service.��

Email cancellation annoying, but not illegal

The Telecommunications Industry ombudsman, Cynthia Gebert, tells ����Vlog the agency has been receiving complaints about the move by TPG Telecom, but adds that “the TIO cannot compel a provider to continue offering a service or product. What we do expect is providers give sufficient notice when making changes to the services they offer and to work with their customers to find alternative solutions”.��

For changes in service, customers may have cause for complaint if they were given less than 30 days notice.��

For telco customers like Jim, David and others who have contacted ����Vlog, even 30 days is not enough time to update all your log-ins and remember how many businesses and government websites have your current email address.��

“The fundamental issue is lack of notice,” Jim says. “Getting someone to use an email address with your domain name is good strategy for a business because it locks people in. But if you’re going to do that you need to look after them.”

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On this page:

• OneDrive basics
• OneDrive requirements
• Setting up OneDrive
• Setting up OneDrive's encrypted Personal Vault
• Sharing OneDrive folders with other people

Microsoft OneDrive is a cloud service that sits somewhere between storage and syncing and it gives you the convenience of integrating with the Windows File Explorer management system, so you can use it just as you would any other folder on your PC.��

We run through how it works, including requirements and getting set up, so you can stay connected to your files across multiple devices.

OneDrive basics

By default, Windows’ File Explorer has three primary sections: Quick Access, This PC and Network.��

Your personal files, folders and programs live locally on your computer in the This PC section.

In turn, This PC has top-level folders such as Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Pictures, etc. It’s also where you access various drive partitions such as your C: drive.

OneDrive adds a fourth primary section called OneDrive – Personal. It gives you local storage areas that can also sync to the cloud.

Organisationally, OneDrive still has the top-level Desktop, Documents and Pictures folders, but it places them alongside regular folders. Other than this small difference, it’s structurally similar to This PC, albeit without access to your local drive partitions and programs.

Files synced to OneDrive can be saved locally on your storage drive and to the cloud at the same time, or only to the cloud (to save space on your PC) and downloaded to your PC’s storage on demand.

If you have a file saved on the OneDrive local storage of two PCs on the same account, changing it on one will update it on the other the next time that PC’s OneDrive syncs.

Deleting a synced file on your PC deletes it from OneDrive and from other same-account PCs, and vice versa. You can also access files from your phone or tablet if you install the OneDrive app, which synchronises with your OneDrive cloud storage as well.

What syncs and what doesn’t?

OneDrive has some odd restrictions, but the solution is to adopt some simple changes in habit. It can auto-sync with the top-level This PC folders – Documents, Desktop and Pictures – but nothing else.��

You also can’t sync a whole drive, such as your C: drive. This creates a separation when auto-syncing files within the This PC section because you have to save them to one of those three top-level folders.

A solution is to stop using the local-only This PC for saving basic files such as documents, images and videos. Instead, make the OneDrive section your go-to for saving files.

If you want to back up individual existing files or folders from your computer, you can do it as a one-off, rather than setting up a continuing auto-sync. Just copy the file or folder from This PC, then paste it anywhere in OneDrive. From now on, access it via OneDrive to make use of syncing, and either ignore (or delete) the original, locally stored files.

OneDrive is not a full backup

OneDrive offers moderate protection against sudden hardware failure because your synced files are in the cloud, even if they’re also saved to your PC. If your PC dies, you don’t lose those files.

But it’s still a single point of failure for ransomware, malware (malicious software), and user error. The personal (i.e. not business or school accounts) version of OneDrive does have a rollback feature to recover deleted files within 30 days or restore up to 25 previous saved versions, but it’s no substitute for a separately stored full backup.

OneDrive requirements

OneDrive requires a Microsoft account to use and comes in three subscription tiers.��

• The free version, included with Windows, only offers 5GB of storage, so we don’t recommend setting up any auto-sync features with the possible exception of your desktop. Pick and choose what to store.
• The OneDrive Standalone plan ($3 per month) has an allowance of 100GB. This is within the ballpark of its competition, such as the 100GB of Google One (formerly Drive) for $2.49 per month, or 200GB of Apple iCloud for $4.49 per month. But they lack the benefit of OneDrive’s easy Windows integration across multiple devices.
• Those with a Microsoft 365 subscription (formerly Office 365) get 1TB of storage. But if you cancel your subscription, you’ll need to download any files that are only saved to the cloud, or they’ll be deleted after 90 days. Microsoft 365 is $99 per year for a personal plan or $129 per year for the family plan with up to six users, who each get 1TB.

Setting up OneDrive

To get started, press the Start key, type OneDrive and select the result. Follow the prompts to set it up, but for now hold off on selecting Desktop, Documents and Pictures for auto-backup. If OneDrive isn’t installed on your computer already, you can install it via the Microsoft Store.

From now on, when you open File Explorer you should see OneDrive as an option sitting alongside ‘Quick access’, ‘This PC’ and ‘Network’. Left-click to open it and you’ll see familiar folders such as Documents, Desktop, Pictures and Music. If you neglected to tick the backup options when you set OneDrive up, these folders should be empty.

Think before you sync

Setting up auto-sync for Documents, Desktop or Pictures isn’t a good idea if you’re using the free version of OneDrive with its 5GB storage. If you have the 100GB subscription, you’ll still need to be careful not to go over your limit.

Syncing Desktop is different, however. If you’re particular about your Windows desktop arrangement for shortcuts, folders and files, then syncing the Desktop top-level folder will clone this experience across your other synced PCs.

Setting up OneDrive auto-sync

To sync Documents, Pictures and Desktop, left-click on the OneDrive icon in your system tray (bottom right of your main display) and click the Settings icon (a cog), then select Settings.

In the Backup tab, click Manage backup.��Tick which of these three options you’d like to automatically sync with OneDrive, then click Start backup.

This will begin transferring all files within each selected folder to OneDrive, which might take a while, depending on how much you need to upload.��

You can follow the same steps to de-sync these sections at any time.��Doing so will only stop new syncs from happening – it won’t delete or revert local or cloud-saved files.

Setting up OneDrive’s encrypted Personal Vault

OneDrive comes with a secure Personal Vault folder, which is encrypted and requires authorisation such as a password or multi-factor authentication to access.

The Personal Vault is a good place to store sensitive documents and information but, as with any encrypted vault storage, make sure you take careful note of the security checks you set up. If you forget, you might be in trouble.

Microsoft 365 subscribers can store as much as they want in the vault, up to their OneDrive storage limit. OneDrive Standalone subscribers and those who use the free version can only store up to three files.

To set up your Personal Vault, double-click on it and follow the prompts.

Sharing OneDrive folders with other people

You can share OneDrive folders, but not individual files, with other people via their Microsoft accounts. When sharing a folder, you choose to share it with anyone who has the link, or with specific people. You can also grant them permission to edit or only view the content of your folder, set a password, and enter an expiry date for access.

If you grant editing permission, synced files will update when anyone makes changes to them. If you’re both editing a file at once, OneDrive will alert you of the conflict and create a second file.

Some apps, such as Excel, Word and PowerPoint (Microsoft 365 versions) allow multiple people to edit at the same time, which Microsoft calls ‘co-authoring’. But if the program you’re using doesn’t allow co-authoring, you can’t have two or more people working on a file simultaneously or you’ll run into versioning issues.

To share a OneDrive folder, right-click on it and select Share.

To decide who has access, click on Anyone with the link can edit and choose either that option or click on Specific people. Any specific people must have a Microsoft account.

To make the folder view-only, click on Can edit and change it to Can view. The MM/DD/YYYY field is the (optional) expiry date for this sharing session. To set a password, click Set password.

After you click Apply, you’ll get another screen asking you where to send the invitation, and with the option to add a message. If you chose Anyone with the link can edit, click on Copy to get the shareable link.

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