The Ministry of Communications and Digital (KKD) has revealed that 410.59 million unsolicited Short Message Services (SMS) were blocked in the first 9 months of this year. Its Deputy Minister, Teo Nie Ching further revealed that 19 million SMS containing hyperlinks were blocked from 2 May until September 2023.
According to Bernama, these SMS were blocked by telco companies as per the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission’s (MCMC) directive. Teo said that this is part of the effort by the government to stop online scams in the form of websites, social media accounts calls and SMS.
On 14 February, MCMC said it had consistently instructed all telecommunications service providers to immediately block any SMS containing prohibited content from being sent or received by any individuals in its effort to combat online scams. Furthermore, the KKD Deputy Minister said that from January until 31 October, MCMC had taken down 4013 accounts and fraudulent content, as well as blocked 1764 fake websites for information phishing scams.
However, Teo said that there is still no solution that can block all scams as scammers can still register new names to send phishing messages. In fact, online fraud is the highest cybersecurity incident reported to Cyber999 operated by CyberSecurity Malaysia, adding that of 4898 reports of incidents received between January and October 2023, 3087 cases were related to online fraud.
So, what do you guys think of the statistics revealed by KKD? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.
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