"Wide-Ranging Philippines Phishing Scams Are Sending Out Millions of Messages, SIM Card Registration Bill Proposed as a Solution"
Residents of the Philippines have been bombarded with phishing scams pushing millions of malicious messages aimed at stealing their login credentials. Therefore, the Philippines government is considering reintroducing a previously vetoed bill that would require SIM card registration. The previous version of the bill required not only SIM card registration but also the registration of social media accounts with a legal name and phone number. Former President Rodrigo Duterte vetoed the bill in April due to a lack of detailed guidelines and concerns about free speech. Phishing scams targeting residents of the Philippines involve messages posing as legitimate online services attempting to get recipients to visit a phishing page. It remains unclear who is behind these large and well-organized phishing scams, and the government has yet to release data on how many citizens and residents have been impacted by them. PLDT and Globe, the country's two largest carriers, have tried to reassure their customers that they block over a billion scam messages and hacking attempts each year and that threat actors have not breached their systems. However, some legislators, such as Senate Public Services Committee Chair Grace Poe, believe that SIM card registration should be enforced because phishing scams disproportionately affect low-income job seekers and those needing financial assistance. During the COVID-19 pandemic, phishing scams went into overdrive as demand for online services of all kinds increased. The majority of this new traffic came from mobile devices, which are more difficult for users to detect attacks on for various reasons. These reasons include the inability to see full URLs before clicking a link, the relative ease of making malicious SMS messages appear legitimate, and a tendency to not secure personal phones the same way as computers. This article continues to discuss phishing scams in the Philippines and the revival of the SIM card registration plan.