Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, January 24) — The top official of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) said there has been a “significant drop” in text scams following the implementation of the SIM registration law.
“Dati, before this law was signed ilang text messages ang natatanggap niyo sa isang araw? (Previously, before this law was signed, how many text messages did you receive in a day?) I’m sure all of you felt the significant drop,” DICT Secretary Ivan Uy said during a Palace briefing on Tuesday.
Uy even noted that if before he used to receive six or seven malicious messages, the number was cut to just one or two messages.
Late last year, authorities faced mounting reports of spam text messages, even bearing subscribers’ names. This prompted the National Telecommunications Commission to order telecommunications firms to strengthen efforts to block fraudulent activities targeting Filipino consumers.
Major telco players in the country also blocked millions of spam messages, including malicious links attached to the messages.
Implemented almost a month ago, one of the main reasons the government passed the SIM registration law was to curb the proliferation of scam messages.
Uy said more than 20 million SIM cards are now registered, out of the over 168.97 million active users. Subscribers have until April 26 of this year to register their SIM cards.
