The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is working on Australia’s largest and most advanced language technology research project in a bid to stop rip-off artists operating on the internet.

The aptly named “ScamSeek” project combines the efforts of ASIC, the Capital Markets Co-operative Research Centre, the University of Sydney and Macquarie University. The budget is for more than $1 million.

ScamSeek will use innovative language technology to identify possible breaches of the Corporations Act on internet websites. It has already received some international interest.

ASIC hopes ScamSeek will determine risks by scanning information in public and private databases. The regulator will also examine risks associated with certain websites and further analyse the sites that are not above the “acceptable risk” threshold.

University of Sydney team leader Jon Patrick said the system will analyse the meanings of words, so that “cleverly disguised words” can’t be used to exploit people on the internet.