MANILA, Philippines- The Philippines is currently contacting other countries to address the scam text messages that have fallen prey to many Filipinos.
Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Ivan John Uy said the Philippines is contacting other territories to issue warrants against those involved in “smishing schemes”.
Uy did not give further details on this matter.
“I cannot reveal to you, because it would signal… because some of the operators are located in those countries,” according to the Secretary in an interview with him on the sidelines of Bankers Night.
“Those law enforcement agencies, we’re working on them also to work on their warrants and so if I tell you where they are, they’ll pack up and leave,” wika pa nito.
He said that personalized scam text messages have spread in the country where the National Privacy Commission (NPC) admitted that it had difficulty finding the source of the information.
The month of June was when Telco firms said they had blocked millions of “smishing” messages, referring to the “practice of sending text messages” pretending to be from a legitimate organization to obtain a user’s personal information.
Uy said that the Cybercrime Investigation Coordinating Center of the DICT is working with the Philippine National Police’s (PNP) Cybercrime Group, the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), and the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC).
“They pooled all their resources together and are working extensively to address this issue. This issue has been persistent and the syndicates that are operating are very well-funded, they are high-tech, very resourceful,” ani Uy.
“Once you open one avenue, it leads to another rabbit hole, and then when you track that down, it leads to another and it goes all over the world. Then we need to tap our friends from the other law agencies in other countries,” wika pa nito.
He insisted that cybercriminals take advantage of victims by cheating and stealing from them, which he said is enough reason for the victims to file a lawsuit.
“They don’t want to steal P100 million from one bank or from one financial institution because the bank’s going to go after them. But if they steal P100 from a million people, none of those 1 million people are going file a complaint when they lose P100,” ani Uy.
“The amount of trouble they have [Such a big hassle for them] for what? for P100? So we need our legislators to come up with laws in order to change probably how we prosecute these,” dagdag na pahayag ni Uy.
The government, he said, is allowed to take action or motu proprio, and file a complaint even if no affidavit has been filed from a private individual who has been exploited by scammers.
Meanwhile, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is set to try. the SIM Card Registration Act, this Monday, which aims to require all users to register with public telecommunications entities (PTEs). Chris Joseph
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