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Manila Bulletin devider Philippines devider National devider Spam text on job offers 'cause for concern' due to privacy issues — Nograles

Spam text on job offers 'cause for concern' due to privacy issues — Nograles

Published Nov 23, 2021 04:56 pm

The deluge of text messages offering fake job offers to the public is a “cause for concern” for Malacañang as it highlights privacy concerns in the country, an official said on Tuesday, Nov. 23.

Cabinet Secretary and acting presidential spokesperson Karlo Nograles said the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) is already investigating the matter.

Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles (PNA / FILE PHOTO / MANILA BULLETIN)

“Oo, siyempre, ‘pag (Yes, of course, that’s a) privacy issue ‘yan. It’s always a cause for concern not only for IATF but for government and for the public siyempre (of course),” he added.

The IATF is the Inter-agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases or the government’s pandemic task force.

“Yung (The) NTC is already investigating the matter and of course, it is also within the purview and mandate ng National Privacy Commission to also investigate the matter. So hintayin natin ‘yung kanilang investigation (Let’s just wait for their investigation),” Nograles said.

Over the weekend, the public received a spate of text messages offering dubious job offers, raising concerns among officials that the phone numbers were sourced from contact-tracing forms.

READ: Contact tracing apps are not leaking your information

But a NPC official said the scam was orchestrated by international syndicates and that there is no evidence that phone numbers were obtained through contact-tracing forms.

Senator Joel Villanueva, chairperson of the Senate labor committee, earlier urged the NPC to investigate the “epidemic of text scams.”

He said the rise in texts being blasted to mobile phone users could be the “forbidden fruit of a data breach or data sale somewhere.”

Telecommunication companies reminded its subscribers to be vigilant over the sudden increase of spam text messages.

They told subscribers to not entertain survey questions from unknown senders, not to click any link, and never provide personal information to strangers.

Related Tags

Spam messages NTC Karlo Nograles NPC joel villanueva job offers privacy issues
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