The extension of the SIM card registration last April would serve as the “last chance” for scammers to register numbers and come up with new methods, Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) Secretary Ivan John Uy said on Tuesday, May 16.
Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards/DICT Secretary Ivan John Uy (Photo courtesy of Unsplash, Presidential Communications Office)
During a media briefing in Malacañang, the official lamented how scammers used the SIM card registration extension to produce new ways to hoodwink consumers.
“Once inextend natin ito the scammers will use, take that opportunity to continue and to hasten their scamming methods using their respective cellphone dahil kung baga last chance na nila to be able to do that (Once we extend this, the scammers will use, take that opportunity to continue and to hasten their scamming methods using their respective cellphone because that is their last chance to be able to do that),” he explained.
He acknowledged that text scams are again proliferating, although “most of them now redirected, reprogram their approach.”
Uy listed the new modus of scammers, including asking unregistered consumers to click on a link to register their SIM cards and telling them to register their e-wallets separately.
But once consumers clicked on these “fake” sites, the scammers would “capture your personal data which you key in into those sites.”
The DICT chief appealed to consumers not to fall into those scams.
“Once you register, your SIM card everything is still the same and you’re still registered to your e-wallets. We are hoping that our kababayans would register quickly and so that we can cut this method, this avenue of defrauding our kababayans by using the SIM card,” the official added.
The DICT extended the deadline from April 26 to July 26, which Uy hoped would be enough “to really end all of this scamming via text.”
As of May 10, 95 million SIM cards have already been registered.
“So, that’s a very good number and we expect that in the next few months we will be able to hit our target already,” he added.
Earlier, the official revealed that he expects total SIM registrations to be around 100 million since the remaining 50 million are disposable ones used for “different purposes,” such as telemarketing and scamming.
There are a total of 168,016,400 active SIM cards in the Philippines.