Asean members join forces to fight online scams

BORACAY—Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) are setting up a working group to combat the proliferation of online scams, which have been on the rise as cybercriminals take advantage of the increasing digital adoption.

Thailand proposed to create an anti-online scam working group during the 3rd Asean Ministers Meeting, Jocelle Batapa-Sigue, undersecretary for ICT Industry Development of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), said on the sidelines of the event on Friday.

The DICT official said they were set to convene next month to start the discussions on how the region can align their various cybersecurity initiatives. The Asean members intend to iron out the details this year so they can make their recommendations by 2024, Batapa-Sigue said.

This initiative comes at a time when text scams are in abundance. These spam messages prey on unsuspecting victims, luring them to share their personal information such as bank account details.

The National Telecommunications Commission has issued several warnings about these text scams that could potentially lead to financial losses on the part of the victims.

“As chair, the Philippines strongly denounces and takes action against the proliferation of all these scams,” Information and Communications Secretary Ivan John Uy said. INQ