PLDT Inc.’s wireless arm Smart Communications Inc said that they have decided to waive blocking the clickable links in text messages last Friday.
“Our recent investigation bared that these unscrupulous messages are being sent through individual SIMs,” said Angel Redoble, FVP and chief information security officer of PLDT and Smart.
In their statement, Smart said that they have previously explored blocking clickable links or Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). Effective in all SMS that passes through their network as a way of fighting back the rise of smishing. “Upon closer study, however, we decided to forego this approach. Notably, neither the National Telecommunications Commission nor the National Privacy Commission has ordered the ban on clickable links in SMS,” said Angel Redoble.
In addition, chief data privacy officer Leah Jimenez said that “smishing is best fought with nuance, by wielding a scalpel and not an axe. We are taking a multi-pronged approach on targeted smishing.”
PLDT and Smart to continue fighting smishing
Redoble also explained that Smart will still continue to establish controls so that the company will be enabled to counter smishing more effectively. He specifically said that “SMS sent via our SMS broadcast service can no longer contain URL shorteners that have been shown to be used by SMS spammers.”
“More importantly, we have not hesitated in suspending access to our network of aggregator-clients that have been involved in sending out smishing. We also continue to cooperate in the ongoing government investigations. We comply with the orders of our regulators for information on smishing activities,” said Redoble.
Redoble also said, “We have met with law enforcement officials to strategize on how to apprehend the perpetrators of these SMS scams. We still have our public awareness initiatives to educate the public on how best to protect themselves against SMS-related frauds,”.
Globe has begun earlier on to temporarily blocking all text messages that contain URLs or website links. From both prepaid and postpaid numbers, as part of their effort to fight off spam and scam text messages.
Earlier last September, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) instructed telcos to block all URLs, links and quick response codes on text messages. Especially because of the rapid increase of spam text messages, some of which even contain the recipient’s personal information. “The NTC is conducting investigation; we are (focusing) on prevention,” Edgardo V. Cabarios, an NTC deputy commissioner, told reporters on Tuesday during the inauguration of PLDT and Smart’s integrated operations center.
Smart said that 99% of the SMS sent through its network is legitimate, thus a “wholesale prohibition on the sending of links via SMS would cripple our customers’ ability to connect with their business networks and community.” For all that, while Smart has been aggressive to come-after the culprits of smishing and spam messages, Jimenez said that the telco “has not lost sight of the need to protect our customers’ right to privacy and the freedom to communicate.”—AOL, GMA News
Their decision is not the finest choice of action since smishing is really rampant nowadays. But whether they choose to continue blocking clickable links and URLs or not, we still need to be careful with the messages we receive. Better yet, we should take no notice of messages from unknown numbers. It is suspicious enough to be receiving SMS from unregistered number. What more messages containing things such as being a winner of a raffle we never participated in the first place.
Even though they stopped blocking links, they said that they are still taking actions. So, while they have not made any huge countermeasures yet, let us be aware of our interactions. But still trust that hopefully they will do something about the root cause of this disturbing issue at hand.
