The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has told telco giants to send out warnings about the rise of “new types of fake job and other text scams” that now include the full names of subscribers.
In their most recent memo, which was written on August 26 but only sent to the media on Wednesday, the NTC said, “During the month of August, fake job texts, lucky winner texts, and other money scams that target the general public have continued to spread across telecommunications networks in the country, with the most recent one including the name of the recipient.”
According to the NTC memo, from August 31 to September 6, 2022, DITO Telecommunity, Globe Telecom, and Smart Communications will send the following message to their subscribers via text message:
“BABALA. HUWAG PONG MANIWALA SA TEXT NA NAGLALAMAN NG INYONG PANGALAN NA NAG-AALOK NG TRABAHO, PABUYA O PERA. ITO PO AY ISANG SCAM.”
The said three telcos have until September 9 to send written reports showing how they are following the latest NTC directive.
The telco regulator also told telco companies “to speed up the process of blocking SIM cards that are being used to commit these fraudulent activities and to improve the messaging of their respective public information campaigns to take into account the new versions of the text scams.”
Also, the National Privacy Commission (NPC) is looking into how many of these scam texts with names of subscribers there are. NPC Commissioner John Henry Naga said that the agency met with telco companies on Thursday and promised to do more to protect against scammers with technology and security.