A ranking member of the House of Representatives has advised Filipjnos with mobile devices such as smart phones to register their SIM cards early to avoid potential deactivation of the all-important cards.

At the same time, Camarines Sur 2nd district Rep. LRay Villafuerte expressed hope Monday, Dec. 26 that the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) have come up with an “ultrasafe cybersecurity system” in the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of the new law on SIM registration.

Villafuerte said having such system would help "avoid any future breach in the sensitive data of registered subscribers and prevent PTEs (public telecommunications entities) or other groups from exploiting the would-be database for telemarketing purposes”.

SIM stands for subscriber identity module. It is used on mobile devices such as phones and tablets.

Villafuerte, majority leader of the power Commission on Appointments (CA), gave this advice to Filipinos one day ahead of the start of SIM registration as mandated by Republic Act (RA) No.11934 or the SIM Registration Act.

Tuesday, Dec. 27 marks exactly the second week of the public release of the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of RA No.11934. This means that the new law will officially take effect tomorrow.

“With the release of RA No.11934’s IRR last Dec. 12, all existing postpaid and prepaid SIM users are from hereon required, under this law, to register within 180 days, or about six months, to avoid deactivation of their celfone numbers,” Villafuerte, one of the principal authors of this law, said.

However, the IRR states that this deadline may be stretched by a maximum of 120 days or four months.

Villafuerte said that to register, each individual celfone user or SIM card owner will have to submit his or her full name, date of birth, sex, current or official address and official identification (ID) card and number to the PTE where he or she has a mobile phone subscription.

“With the mandatory SIM registration, all mobile phone subscribers will be better protected against the plethora of phone-based scams like smishing, more so now when digital tricksters have managed to hack more personal information from their victims, including the actual names of these celfone users they intend to swindle," he said.

“It will be easier for the authorities or PTEs to trace persons behind text scams and hold them accountable for breach of privacy along with celfone-based fraud and other punishable offenses they are able to perpetrate by using unknown or unregistered mobile phone numbers,” the Bicolano added.