‘DICT, NTC must intensify efforts vs text scams’  

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DITC) and National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) should escalate their efforts to halt rampant text scams victimizing many unsuspecting mobile phone users in the country, said.

Poe has, herself, received a number of unwanted texts from prepaid mobile phone numbers promising jobs, extra income, incentives and freebies.

She said despite the NTC’s earlier directive to major telecommunication companies Globe, Smart and Dito to warn subscribers against fake jobs from May 28 to June 4, such text messages have persisted with new gimmicks to bait and deceive mobile phone users.

As of the end of March 2022, Globe has 87.4 million subscribers while Smart has 70.3 million. As of end of 2021, Dito reported having five million subscribers.

Poe urged the telcos to beef up their continuing efforts to block SIM cards that are clearly used only in criminal pursuits and for the incoming 19th Congress to take up the SIM card registration bill to help institutionalize protection for millions of mobile phone users in the country.

Meanwhile, Globe Telecom is urging customers to take advantage of tools available on their personal devices to help prevent spam or scam messages from unknown senders.

Globe has advised customers to activate tools such as built-in SMS spam ?lters or blockers in their devices to reduce spam and scam messages.

“While our cybersecurity team continues to work on anti-spam and anti-scam initiatives on the network side, customers can also make use of tools on their own devices to help protect themselves,” said Anton Bonifacio, Globe chief information security of?cer. – Richmond Mercurio