Credit goes to telecommunications companies for taking immediate action on the innovation introduced by fraudsters to use the names of online users to personalize their messages. The steps being taken by these companies are more than the usual pronouncements of government agencies which continue to tell us they will investigate the matter.
GCash introduced masking the name of the recipient in reaction to social media concerns that names of potential victims were taken from e-wallets. Instead of seeing the full name of the recipient, the sender will see asterisks in the place of some of the letters, based on the decision taken by GCash. Another move lined up by GCash is to stop the confirmation text messages and instead have verification of transactions via the app inbox. This move is still pending.
Smart Communications, for its part, is conducting simulation tests of their response to the clamor to stop the “personalized” scam attempts on online users.
These measures come days after the new way to deceive the public was revealed. The response of telcos was immediate, or at least their effort to seek solutions, but the action required to put an end to online scams go beyond that.
The recent uproar was on seeing the names of consumers in the text scam message but the…
