Amid the rise of text scams in the Philippines, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has ordered major telcos to block clickable links in text messages.
In a memorandum sent to telcos on September 12, 2022, the NTC directed Globe Telecom, Smart Communications, and DITO Telecommunity to "block or deactivate domains or Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), TinyURLs, Smart Links and/or QR Codes emanating from malicious sites."
These websites should be based on the existing database collected from government agencies like the NTC, National Privacy Commission (NPC), Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), law enforcement agencies, as well as subscriber reports and those generated from machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI).
The three telco companies were given until September 16, 2022, to submit their written compliance reports to the Office of the Commissioner.
In a separate statement, Globe said it "welcomes" the directive as it institutionalizes the combat against spam and SMS scams.
According to Globe, it "has long been blocking spam and scam text messages" it detects, including those containing malicious URLs or links.
Moreover, Globe will work "closely" with the NTC to develop new solutions to further protect its users against online fraud.
Meanwhile, Smart vice president and head of regulatory affairs Roy Ibay shared that they have been "conducting such efforts in the past, which have led to 342 million 'smishing' messages blocked from June to August alone."
From January to August 2022, Smart blocked a total of 11.3 billion attempts to access malicious websites and a total of 5.5 million domains with malicious URLs related to phishing, spam, and hoax.
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Additionally, a total of 342 million text messages and 167,000 mobile numbers were blocked due to phishing and scams from June to August alone.
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