Smart Communications, Inc., the wireless unit of the PLDT, says it is working in close coordination with the Philippine National Police (PNP) Anti-Cybercrime Group and the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Council of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), to put the culprits behind textual fraud.
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“We are supporting government-led efforts to identify the scammers and to pin down where they’re getting the SIMs that they’re using to run their modus,” said Angel Redoble, FVP, and Chief Information Security Officer of PLDT and Smart.
Smart itself investigates suspicious SIM card purchases that may be linked to illegal activity. Smart says it has made significant progress in understanding the nature and source of suspicious SIM cards.
“Our initial investigation has shown that the fraudulent messages are being sent phone-to-phone. They don’t pass through aggregators. Most likely, the perpetrators have bought the SIMs in bulk. But through our blocking efforts, we are making it expensive for them to use this method,” added Redoble.
It was found that 167,000 numbers used in fraudulent activities were blocked by Smart from June to August alone. During the same period, the network blocked 342 million smishing messages.
Since the National Telecommunications Commission ordered Smart to block links in text scams, Smart has blocked uniform resource locators (URLs) related to modus.
In August of this year, Smart prevented 11 billion attempts to access phishing websites by blocking more than 5.5 million malicious domains.
Additionally, Smart has reaffirmed its support for mandatory SIM registration. A House panel recently approved a consolidated measure requiring SIM card registration aid and postpaid services to curb mobile phone-aided criminal activities such as text scams.
As part of Smart's larger effort to enrich the customer experience by protecting them from threats and attacks, it detects and blocks malicious messages, including SIM cards and websites linked to fraudulent activities.