Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bruce Billson interview with Thomas Oriti.
ABC News Radio
Subject: Small business problems with digital platforms
Thomas Oriti
There's been a spike in Facebook and Instagram users getting their accounts taken over by hackers and being locked out of them. Sometimes for months. And when your account is a vital method of advertising, losing that access can become pretty costly. So, let's get more on this now. We're joined by Bruce Billson. He's Australia's small business Ombudsman. Bruce, good morning. Thank you for your time.
Bruce Billson
Thomas, fab to be with you and your listeners.
Thomas Oriti
How bad is this problem become then?
Bruce Billson
It's increasingly a concern for more and more businesses that rely on these digital channels as the way they relate to their customers and they get their goods and services to market. Obviously, there is frustration that a private citizen would have when they've got account detail problems. For a business, it basically shuts the door, the electronic door to the very people they need to keep a pulse in their business. And then there's this ultimate runaround Thomas. You can be locked out of your account and on some of these platforms, they say, log into your account to tell us you've got a problem of being locked out of your account. You can see how ridiculous that is, but it's increasingly concern. We get involved in terms of it being a business-to-business dispute. But it's tough to resolve these matters in a timely way.
Thomas Oriti
Why are they doing it? Are they asking for a ransom to get back into the account or something or is it just people being pests?
Bruce Billson
It's a range of things. One is that digital platform presence, that account, may be the entry point to a number of other customer relationships where there's valuable data about payment arrangements and the like. It might be that they've taken over the account to substitute in their own advertising and then tap into the advertising spend that that business has got. And then finally it might just simply be a malicious matter where people want to take you down or pimp around crypto currency opportunities and things like that. So, there's a there's a range of reasons and the consequences can be profound.
They may start from simply that business being effectively taken out of business because they have no access to their customers. The expense of them taking over your ad spend, you start seeing thousands of dollars of ad spend coming through your account because it's been taken over. And then there's risks around cyber hacks and access to people that you're doing business with.
Thomas Oriti
Do we know how this is actually happening, how the hackers are getting access to these Facebook and Instagram accounts?
Bruce Billson
Look, it varies. I mean, they're obviously harvesting data from a range of sources. They might be able to identify the connected email address that would give them entry and they just persevere. And it's really a concern that when those events happen, then the business that's relying on these digital platforms as their channel to market has very few options available.
The self-help tips that you might be able to find on these sites can be not terribly useful. And then if you want to escalate the matter, the internal dispute resolution options can be non-existent. And heaven forbid if you wanted to talk to a real human. Boy, that is a tough one.
Thomas Oriti
I get the drift because Meta, by the way, aren't available for an interview and didn't respond to our written questions. But in terms of what you just said, there are claims in the US, for example, where there's a huge spike in this happening that Meta has actually sacked a lot of the staff who work in this area and they're outsourcing the issue. Is that the impression that you get?
Bruce Billson
We've seen some of that. We know the Meta staff that we have a relationship with have changed recently. As to the actual number that's available to sort out these matters, it's never been enormous in the first place. Let's just say they've hardly shot the lights out with dispute resolution prior to any staffing changes.
What we find is we say to these platforms we can help, but you've got to help us. Otherwise, the risk is governments will intervene further. They'll come up with some industrial, expensive and clunky way of getting a resolution and no one will be happy. It'll cost the platforms more money. We say to them, work with us and we can turn these things around quickly, but we need a real human to speak to, to try and get these matters resolved in many cases.
Thomas Oriti
In the meantime, while you don't have a human to speak to, what advice can you give to business owners in Australia who find themselves locked out of their social media accounts, given, as you say, these days a lot of businesses rely on Facebook and things not just for advertising, but to take all their bookings and other things as well.
Bruce Billson
There's a couple of things we would recommend. Have a separate email address that's linked to your various separate digital marketplace accounts. So, if one goes down, you can still stay up and about on other ones. Set your privacy levels to where you're comfortable and that you can control what's going on. Turn off functions that are of no immediate use that might represent a risk, like if you're not buying ads, don't set up the functionality for the ad spend and payment links to be readily available. Use dual factor certification. And, another thing too, if I was buying ads on one of these platforms and it was attached to a credit card, I'd have a very low balance on that credit card so if its taken over it's not going to be catastrophic.
Thomas Oriti
They can't max it out and as you say, don't leave yourself vulnerable to some of those things if you don't need the service in the first place. Bruce, it is great to hear thoughts. Thanks for joining us.
Bruce Billson
Thanks, Thomas.
