PLDT and its wireless unit Smart Communications, Inc. (Smart) on Friday said that they continue to crack down on text scams, as Smart purged its network of more than 36,000 mobile numbers involved in phishing, smishing and vishing, bringing the total blacklisted SIMs to more than 200,000.
These initiatives helped prevent more than 51 million text scams from reaching customers in the same period. Since Smart boosted efforts against “smishing” in January, the mobile services provider has stopped close to 400 million fraudulent messages from going through its network.
“Scammers are quick to adapt their strategy. But we remain relentless in protecting the public through a precision approach that clamps down on criminals without sacrificing customer experience,” Angel Redoble, first vice president and chief information security officer of PLDT and Smart, said.
PLDT and Smart have expanded their anti-fraud efforts in cyberspace as text scams often contain uniform resource locators (URLs) that direct customers to phishing sites.
In their statement, PLDT said that in September, Smart prevented around 1.4 billion attempts to access malicious domains. By the end of September, the two telcos had blacklisted more than 5.5 million domains with URLs tied to phishing, scams, hoaxes, and other fraudulent activities.
PLDT and Smart’s Child Protection Platform also remain hard at work blocking around 220,000 attempts to open online sexual abuse and exploitation of children (Osaec) in September.
So far, PLDT and Smart have blocked more than 1.3 billion attempts to access Osaec materials after identifying around 465,000 URLs related to online child abuse.
They added that they helped curb mobile-based fraudulent activities to elevate the quality of customer experience by protecting them from threats and attacks.
These efforts, they said, are also aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 9 on Industries, Innovation, and Infrastructure.
The initiatives to keep children safe online underscore PLDT and Smart’s commitment to SDG 16 on promoting just, peaceful and inclusive societies, including the end to abuse, exploitation, trafficking, and all forms of violence against and torture of children.
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