Australians are being targeted through text message scams purporting to be from federal government agencies, Telstra boss Andy Penn says.

Telstra is running a pilot program to block text messages from scammers.

“Cyber security is a really serious issue,” Mr Penn told Jim Wilson.

“As we have all moved to work and study from home… we are seeing such a significant increase in malicious activity from phishing scams, internet scams, emails, scam phone calls and texts is the latest one.”

He said their estimates showed Australians had lost $100 million in scams this year.

“We have been working with government to put in place a tool which enables us to identify texts that purport to be coming from mygov or Centrelink and we can tell when they are not, and we can block them and protect customers.”

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Image: Getty