The National Privacy Commission (NPC) on Tuesday, Nov. 23, warned the public against the spate of scam text messages offering fake jobs.
During a Laging Handa briefing, NPC Commissioner Mon Liboro urged the public to block the numbers of those offering dubious jobs.
"These text messages a lot of people are receiving that pretend to provide jobs with large salaries and saying that you will be employed by big companies such as Lazada, are scams. Don't entertain it, block them instead," Liboro said.
He added that such scams will trick people into giving up personal details and sending out money.
"We monitored in our investigation that they will only trick you into providing your personal details. The biggest risk here is that they will also steal money from you because they will say that they will give you a job, but you have to make a payment first before you're given a commission. You will not realize that you have already deposited a lot of money," Liboro explained.
"Don't entertain their questions, those who are inviting you to join a competition or those offering jobs that are too good to be true, don't entertain them," he reiterated.
Those who have been victimized by these scams may report them to NPC and the National Telecommunications Commission, he added.
Liboro said there is no direct evidence linking contact tracing to scam messages and noted that an "organized global syndicate" is behind these scams.