MANILA — More than 105 million Filipinos have registered their SIM cards before the July 25 deadline, according to the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).
“We’re on target,” DICT Secretary Ivan John Uy told reporters yesterday.
As of July 24, there are 49,990,446 registered with Smart Communications, 48,378,674 with Globe Telecom and 7,548,724 with Dito Telecommunity.
This means that 63 percent of existing SIM cards nationwide have been registered.
“After the deadline, you will no longer be able to use your SIM cards. It’s going to be a more tedious process if you need to reactivate those SIM cards,” Uy said.
He pointed out that only 70 percent of SIM card registrations could be legitimate, as some subscribers own more than one SIM card.
There are also SIM cards used for telemarketing or scamming.
“We’ve received reports and we arrested some groups in possession of SIM cards that have been registered by people and they sell those SIM cards to criminal organizations, that are being used for scamming,” Uy said. “Not just SIM cards but even e-wallet accounts or online bank accounts.”
The SIM Registration Act was signed by President Marcos in October 2022.
The deadline was scheduled for April 26, but the government moved it to July 25 to accommodate consumers living in areas with weak cellular signals.
‘One call’ scams
Voice phishing scammers will hopefully be eradicated by the full implementation of the SIM Card Registration Law, according to the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC).
“We call it the ‘one call’ scam. If you answer the call, the scammer has caught you. They can infect you with malware,” CICC Undersecretary Alexander Ramos said in Filipino in an exclusive interview with The STAR.
Fraudsters have already resorted to the “one call” scam or the international revenue share fraud after scams sent through text messages have been greatly reduced.
In this “vishing” or voice phishing scam, trusting mobile subscribers who answer the call will have their load or call minutes charged as they are redirected to a paid service for fortune telling, casino or cyberporn.
Some subscribers have revealed they received phone calls from strangers with Indian accents offering suspicious high-paying call center jobs.
Vishing calls have been reported on Whatsapp, owned by billionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.
Multinational cybersecurity firm Kaspersky said they developed security products to address vishing. (philstar)
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