Smart blocks 36k mobile numbers in September

MANILA, Philippines —  Smart Communications Inc. has removed more than 36,000 mobile numbers involved in phishing, smishing and vishing from its registry at the height of the recent spate of text scams in September.

The wireless subsidiary of PLDT Inc. yesterday reported that this brought the total number of blocked SIMs to 200,000 as of September.

According to Smart, the removal of these mobile numbers from its network helped in preventing around 51 million text scams from reaching subscribers for last month alone.

For the year, Smart has blocked nearly 400 million text scams from infiltrating its network.

PLDT chief information security officer Angel Redoble said the telco giant and its mobile unit would continue to intensify its campaign against the proliferators of messaging scams.

“Scammers are quick to adapt their strategies. But we remain relentless in protecting the public through precision approach that clamps down on criminals without having to sacrifice customer experience,” Redoble said.

PLDT and Smart vowed to  improve anti-fraud efforts to address the changing strategies of text scams, particularly against the use of clickable links that deceive users into giving up their sensitive information.

Last month, Smart blocked some 1.4 billion attempts to spread malicious sites.

After three quarters, Redoble said PLDT and Ayala-led Globe Telecom Inc. prevented more than 5.5 million malicious domains that lead to fraudulent sites linked to phishing, scams and hoaxes.