The spread of text scams will be drastically reduced once the SIM Registration law is “fully implemented,” said Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Undersecretary Anna Mae Lamentillo on Friday, March 17.

In a “Laging Handa” public briefing, Lamentillo said the continuous proliferation of these messages are “unavoidable,” noting that the mandatory SIM registration processes are still ongoing.

“Hindi natin maiiwasan na mag doble kayod itong mga scammers before the full implementation of the SIM registration law. Meron pa po kasi tayong mga nalalabing araw, so ‘yung mga unregistered SIM cards ay active pa rin po ‘yan ngayon (We cannot prevent these scammers to double their efforts before the full implementation of the law. We still have remaining days so unregistered numbers are still active),” said Lamentillo.

She then added that after the registration deadline on April 26, if there would be no extension, unregistered cards will automatically be deactivated.

“[We have seen a decline] as far as spam messages are concerned, but we feel that after the law is fully implemented it will be drastically reduced,” she added.

Latest data released by the government indicated that more than 123 million users have yet to register their SIMs. Lamentillo, however, stressed that this is higher than the “total population count” as cards used in scams and other cybercrimes are also included in this tally.

“Pagkatapos ng SIM Registration process, makikita talaga natin kung ilan talaga ‘yung legitimate number of users (After the SIM Registration process, we will be able to see the number of legitimate users),” Lamentillo.

Republic Act No. 11934, otherwise known as the SIM Registration law, seeks to curb electronic communication-aided crimes such as mobile phishing and text scams.

On the extension of SIM Registration deadline

Pursuant to the SIM Registration’s implementing rules and guidelines, the DICT has the right to give an additional 120-day registration extension, but Lamentillo stressed that they are “not yet looking into this” because they want to maximize the remaining days before the deadline.

“Patuloy tayong magmo-monitor sa dami ng magrerehistro sa bawat araw at ito po ay magiging basehan kung itutuloy yung extension o hindi. We will make an announcement as soon as a decision has been made (We will continuously monitor the number of daily registrants and we will use it as a basis if we will push through with the extension or not. We will make an announcement as soon as a decision has been made),” she explained.

To date, only 27.12 percent of the existing 168,977,773 users have so far registered their SIMs.