According to the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC), text scams are costing Filipinos “millions of dollars.”
CICC Deputy Executive Director Mary Rose said as much when she was asked during a Senate inquiry if the agency had an estimate of how much syndicates have stolen from Filipino text scam victims.
In the same Senate inquiry, the CICC said that they are investigating six syndicates behind the text scams. The agency is currently building a case against them.
Recently, it was discovered that text scammers have changed tactics, switching to SMS aggregators to send scam texts in bulk.
Last September, the NTC tasked Smart Communications, Globe, and DITO Telecommunity to combat text scams.
For their part, both Smart and Globe have moved to block SIM cards used for fraudulent activities and stepping up to block clickable links to malicious sites on SMS messages as well. In turn, text scammers started including instructions to input the URL on a browser to access it.
See also: How to report smishing and text scams to the NTC, Smart, and Globe
If you have received a text scam or have been a victim of one, you are encouraged to report it to NTC, Smart, and Globe.
