ILOILO City – A lady councilor in this city urged the public to be proactive against rampant smishing and phishing – methods scammers use to trick individuals into giving them personal financial information such as credit card numbers, bank account numbers, social security numbers, passwords, and other sensitive information.
Scammers use these information to steal money or use a person’s good name to open new loans or credit cards.
Phishing uses an email message to gather that information. Smishing, on the other hand, uses mobile phone text message.
“It’s not enough to just ignore scam texts and emails. We have to be proactive. Report scam texts and emails,” said Councilor Candice Magdalane Tupas in a privilege speech during yesterday’s regular session of the Sangguniang Panlungsod (SP).
There are several ways of reporting, according to Tupas. One is to go to the website of the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC), ntc.gov.ph, and report through these hotline numbers: +632-8920-4464, +632-89267722, +6328921-3251.
There is also a direct link for text scam complaints and also a step-by-step guide on reporting text scam complaints to the NTC.
Informants may upload screenshots of scam text messages through the application and the numbers used by the purported scammers will be automatically blocked.
For subscribers of Dito telecommunications company, one may report by dialing their hotline number 185. The operators will assist callers.
For Smart subscribers, the public may dial *888 via cellphone or 8881111 via landline, or email them at cybersecurityincidents_customers@smart.com.ph.
Tupas said these telecommunications companies vowed to act promptly by blocking the numbers as well as the spurious links sent.
The city councilor, who chairs the SP committee on communications and public information, earlier called for a committee hearing together with other concerned offices and agencies such as the Philippine National Police, National Bureau of Investigation, Department of Information and Communications Technology, Public Information Office, NTC, and telcos about these illegal schemes.
During the meeting/hearing, telcos promised to get into the bottom of the problem.
According to Tupas, telcos suspected that smishing and phishing are internationally manipulated.
They further disclosed that almost all victims have undisclosed downloadable chat apps. This is a common denominator among those who receive these suspicious text messages carrying full names.
The messages are mostly focused on false job texts, lucky winners and similar money scams targeting the general public.
These are mostly matters which would normally entice a person to be hopeful and believe the fraudulent offers.
“With the current widespread reports and incidents of unsolicited or scam messages sent to random mobile users mentioning specifically the name of the mobile number user, I am bothered because this simply means that we are no longer safe. We are now vulnerable to further personal data leakages,” Tupas expressed.
Unfortunately, as confirmed by the NTC and police enforcement agencies, there are individuals who fall for these malicious text messages and eventually lose money, either via GCash or access into their personal bank accounts.
In Iloilo City, even lawyers were also victimized by scammers recently.
Meanwhile, Tupas said one of the solutions to this problem is the implementation of the SIM Registration Act or the Subscriber Identity Module Registration Act, which was earlier approved and signed into law by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
She said she supports the law.
“If this SIM Registration Act will be implemented, end users may be accountable for their usage of mobile communications by mandating SIM card registration,” said Tupas.
On the other, the lady legislator recognized the efforts of the government agencies concerned and the telcos in continuously monitoring the situation to protect the consumers from these scam messages and emails.
“It is incumbent upon us even in the Iloilo City Council to take measures to ensure that our constituents especially the most vulnerable sectors like the students will not be compromised. Also be assured that on my level, I am taking active part in campaigning for everyone to be on the lookout for potential fraudulent text messages and to avoid these messages and to refrain from divulging any personal information,” she added./PN
