MANILA — Globe, a prominent telecommunications company, has announced a significant decline in the number of blocked bank-related scam and spam messages on its network during the initial six months of this year.
According to a statement released by Globe, only 4.85 million bank-related spam and scam messages were blocked from January to June, marking a substantial decrease from the 9.06 million messages blocked during the same period in the previous year.
In the second quarter of 2023, a mere 779,254 messages were blocked, indicating a substantial drop compared to the 5.1 million messages blocked in the corresponding period of 2022.
Anton Bonifacio, Chief Information Security Officer at Globe, pointed out that the company had entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Bankers Association of the Philippines and forged partnerships with some of the nation’s largest banks to counter cyber fraud.
In 2022, Globe thwarted 2.72 billion scam and spam messages. The company invested around $20 million in upgrading its system for detecting and blocking spam and scam SMS.
Previously, Globe had taken the measure of blocking person-to-person SMS containing clickable URLs (Uniform Resource Locator) from all networks.
The Philippines witnessed a surge in SMS-linked spam and scams last year, prompting the government to enact the SIM Registration Act. (ai/mnm)
