Globe Pushes for Multi-Stakeholder Measures to Combat Phone Scams

With mobile phone scams gaining traction and becoming more bold and aggressive, stopping this anonymous crime of this measure would entail a multi-stakeholder approach says a Globe Telecom Inc. official.

This worldwide scale of mobile phone scams would need  “an equally aggressive pushback by all stakeholders in the public and private sector, who are all victims of these illegal acts”  according to Anton Bonifacio, Globe Telecom’s Chief Information Security Officer.

“There is a shared responsibility to put protective measures in place, increase vigilance and create more awareness,” says Bonifacio.

Law enforcement, business, consumers, the government, and other partners have to work together.

Back in 2017, the Telecommunication Standardization Sector of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T) saw the increasing threat that scams such as short message service (SMS) phishing present to countries, mobile phone and internet users, and telecom operators around the globe.

Back then, ITU-T published a supplement on guidelines on countermeasures against SMS phishing and smishing scams to increase awareness and fight against the scams.

ITU-T notes SMS phishing as “the attempt to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details for malicious reasons, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.”

Several countries still struggle to deal with these practices despite the United Nations’ ICT agency attempts at containing the spread of fraud and cybercrime.

Such practices worsened during the pandemic as online transactions increased.

Globe encourages its customers to report scams and spam messages through its Stop Spam web portal.

“We reiterate our call for mobile phone users to never open or click on links from unknown numbers or engage with these messages by replying with personal information,”  said Bonifacio.

Source: Manila Bulletin