Globe Telecom Inc. forged cybersecurity partnerships with local financial institutions and managed to block 9,063,698 bank-related scam and spam messages in the first half of the year, the telco disclosed Monday, July 4.
The number is part of the 138 million scam and spam messages which Globe blocked from January to June 15, 2022.
It included messages which clients reported to their respective banks, such as suspicious requests for One Time Passwords (OTPs) and other sneaky ways to pry open their accounts and breach secure platforms.
Furthermore, the blocked messages also covered those from blacklisted sender IDs.
In addition, Globe blocked 1,119 vishing calls, another scamming scheme where fraudsters call bank customers pretending to be legitimate bank representatives to obtain sensitive information.
Globe's stringent filtering system kept out the fraudulent bank-related messages and calls.
Significantly, phishing scams using text messaging and email are on the rise, many of which pretend to be official notifications from the banks, the telco warned.
Already, a number of depositors have lost their money to fraudsters.
As early as 2019, Globe created a 24/7 group chat with major commercial banks and Mynt, the operator of GCash, for immediate and direct reporting of spam messages mostly received from their customers.
Banks can report a phishing campaign that impersonates a URL, domain, or mobile number, as well as other spamming and scamming incidents, and Globe will block them.
Globe also offers free whitelisting of official SMS blasting companies, which are the only ones allowed to send messages using a brand or company name.
Recently, the telco signed an agreement with Unionbank to enable a faster alerting mechanism, more seamless data-sharing and expeditious filtering of activities linked to online fraud.
“A lot of the investments we’ve made over recent years have allowed us to have better cybersecurity capabilities," according to
Anton Bonifacio, Globe Chief Information Security Officer.
"We try to squeeze value out of those investments to make sure that we can reach our clients a little bit more directly. At the end of the day, we feel that their customers are our customers too, so we'd rather make sure that those attacks do not exist within the Globe environment,” he added.
After its successful relationship with the banks, Globe likewise decided to work with online marketplaces like Lazada, and Shopee.
The telco provides the same brand whitelisting service as well as 24x7 threat spam/scam intelligence sharing to protect Globe customers using these e-commerce websites.
Nevertheless, customers should cooperate and remain vigilance to prevent cybersecurity issues from spreading, Bonifacio stressed.
They should report mobile numbers responsible for spam and scam messages to https://www.globe.com.ph/stop-spam.html#gref.