Attorney-general Mark Dreyfus said in October he wanted to overhaul privacy laws by the end of the year and some changes, which include increasing fines to up to $50 million or a percentage of a company’s turnover for the most serious breaches, are already being considered by parliament.

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But it isn’t just data breaches that are an issue for businesses. Devine said the company had dramatically reduced the amount of unwanted and scam emails arriving in the inboxes of customers as part of its Cleaner Pipes Initiative, a program designed to reduce the harm of scams, phishing and ransomware.

The telco now blocks an average of 7,600 emails every minute that are sent to Bigpond customers. Between January and October, that is an average of 332 million unwanted emails per month, most of which request the personal or financial details of a person.

“I don’t think we’ll ever eradicate [scam emails] completely,” Devine said. “That said by the sheer numbers, you can definitely see that it’s having a massive impact.”