PLDT Inc. and Smart Communications, Inc. prevented 1.4 billion attempts to access malicious domains and stopped more than 51 million text scams from reaching customers last month, the telco reported Friday, October 15.

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.

This September alone, 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.

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," says Angel Redoble, FVP and Chief Information Security Officer of PLDT and Smart.

"But we remain relentless in protecting the public through a precision approach that clamps down on criminals without sacrificing customer experience,” he underscored.

The two telcos have expanded their anti-fraud efforts in cyber space as text scams often contain uniform resource locators (URL) that direct customers to phishing sites.

In addition, PLDT and Smart’s Child Protection Platform also blocked around 220,000 attempts to open online sexual abuse and exploitation of children (OSAEC) in September.

So far, they have blocked more than 1.3 billion attempts to access OSAEC materials after identifying around 465,000 URLs related to online child abuse.

Both telcos curb mobile-based fraudulent activities to protect customers from threats and attacks.

The initiatives to keep children safe online underscore PLDT and Smart’s commitment to promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies including the end to abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children.