The Department of Information and Communications Technology has been urged to review the SIM Card Registration Act as text scams continue to proliferate.
Camarines Sur Rep. LRay Villafuerte asked DICT officer-in-charge Undersecretary Paul Mercado to revisit Republic Act 11934 law to enable them to be more effective in combating text and online scams.
Working with the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center, Congress, National Telecommunications Commission, National Bureau of Investigation, Philippine National Police and other pertinent institutions should enable the DICT to tweak and get the law approved in 2022 right this time, he said.
This, he said, will result in a more synergtic and effective effort at combating text and online scams.
Villafuerte, one of the authors of the law, said among the possible amendments that be considered is limiting the number of valid government-issued identification cards that registrants can present.
"These scammers should be flushed out once and for all and, more importantly, slapped with the penalties due violators under RA 11934 and RA 10175, or the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012."
The National Telecommunications Commission said it is open and will review all the proposals to come up with the best way to protect subscribers amid the prevalence of text scams and other modus despite the passage of the SIM Card Registration Act.