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Digital ‘budol-budol’
Often for kicks, I open the “Spam” folder of my Email and entangle myself with what digital fraudsters are up to lately in messing up people’s lives. I precisely did that after apprising the big news about the potential personal data breach at GCash, the popular digital payments platform of Globe Telecom Inc. and immediately searched for fake GCash emails. Usually, for safety’s sake, I quickly delete such fakeries. But I took a conscious effort at scrutinizing a message I got last month which purportedly came from the “GCash Help Center.” The message urgently asked me to activate my account by clicking the provided link. Helpful missive that was, innocent-sounding even. Only it was a head-scratcher: I never applied for a GCash account nor have no intentions whatsoever of enrolling into one. I often wonder how these people could assume I wasn’t strictly a cold-cash-paying Luddite struggling with where to place in my all too-small billfold those new-fangled unfoldable one thousand peso bills. Anyway, since I was also often bombarded by National Telecommunication Commission (NTC) text alerts imploring me to be ever watchful with digital fraud, or in the more suitable and folksier digital “budol-budol,” I had become suspicious enough to spot dead giveaways showing fraud. By the way, all of us really have to keep up with fraudsters’ ways. In fact, in our digital era “face-to-face fraud doesn’t really happen anymore. It’s all digital,” says Louis Smith, credit card Visa’s chief risk officer for Southeast Asia. At any rate, in the case of those fake emails, technically known as “phishing” emails, the dead giveaways I learned were: a. the email usually has a generic greeting like “Hi”; the email says your account is on hold because of a billing problem; and the email invites you to click on a link to update your payment details by sending all your personal data. Those raise fakery alarms since legitimate companies, even if they might communicate with you by email, won’t ever email or text you with a link to update your payment information. So there. Still, the growing sophistication and sheer volume of digital “budol-budol” every day catches us off-guard. Nowadays, the risks of digital fraud are alarmingly high. In fact, Globe Telecoms, which owns GCash, reported that it has already blocked 4.07 million malicious bank-related messages in the first quarter of the year, 2.7 percent higher than the number of malicious messages from last year. Last year, too, Globe blocked 85 million bank-related spam and scam messages, part of the record-high 3 billion scam and spam messages filtered by the giant telecom firm between January 2022 and January 2023. In another report, TransUnion, an American credit reporting outfit, says the nation had the third-highest rate of suspected fraudulent digital transactions among all countries and regions analyzed in 2022, with as much as 8.7 percent of digital transactions suspected as fraudulent. TransUnion also reported that from a three-month survey, 71 percent of Filipinos had been targeted by digital fraud attempts through emails, phone calls, online messaging, or texts. Eleven percent of those surveyed admitted to falling victim to fraud. The common fraud schemes experienced by Filipinos were “phishing (fraudulent emails, social posts, websites and QR codes), “smishing” (fraudulent mobile text messages), third-party seller scams, and identity theft. Now if all these scams make it our personal responsibility not to be duped, companies and the government also have to do all they can not to make things worse than it already is. Companies really have to beef up their cybersecurity measures and the government can’t content themselves with launching useless probes after a digital disaster or with registering cellphone SIMs. Where, for instance, is a government-run digital facility where the public can quickly report text or email scams? The US, for example, has SPAM (7726), a sort of 911 where Americans can forward any “smishing” text message. Here, we’re still resorting to reporting digital fraud on social media. The post Digital ‘budol-budol’ appeared first on Daily Tribune......»»
GCash crashes anew amid probe on possible glitch
Virtual wallet provider, GCash, suffered another glitch Saturday morning, even as the National Privacy Commission was making its announcement to conduct an in-depth investigation of the glitch last 10 May 2023 which forced the temporary halt of GCash’s app operations following complaints by GCash users on social media regarding money losses from their accounts. On Saturday rants of irate subscribers filled social media platforms Twitter and Facebook when they weren’t able to open their accounts, airing concerns that funds on their GCash accounts might be compromised. At about 11:39 a.m., GCash on its official Twitter announced that the GCash app was temporarily unavailable, apologizing for the inconvenience to subscribers. “GCash assures you that your account and your funds are safe. We are working on restoring the services as soon as possible,” he said. The app was accessible again after a few minutes of temporary glitches. Deeper probe Also on Saturday, the NPC said it is investigating a potential personal data breach involving compromised accounts of GCash, in light of the temporary halt of GCash app operations last Wednesday. “The NPC’s Complaints and Investigation Division has been closely monitoring this incident since 9 May 2023 amidst circulating reports of GCash users on suspicious transactions on their GCash accounts, to determine the existence of a breach and its extent, and whether there are any other violations of the provisions of the Data Privacy Act of 2012,” said NPC commissioner and chairperson Atty. John Henry D. Naga. He said on Friday that the NPC had issued a notice to explain, and an order addressed to G-Xchange Inc., the company managing GCash, requiring GXI to appear before the NPC for a clarificatory meeting and to provide additional information and documents. During the meeting, Naga said GXI presented information to the NPC about their own investigation and the measures that they have taken to speedily address the incident. Verify claims He said the Privacy Commission will issue another order instructing GXI to provide further information and documents to enable an independent assessment and verify the claims presented by GXI on the supposed phishing being the cause of the glitch. He then assured the public that all necessary steps have been made by the NPC to protect the rights of GCash clients as data subjects. “The NPC is committed to safeguarding the privacy of all individuals and will continue to provide guidance on how the public can better protect themselves from violations of their data privacy rights, even as these threat actors are also becoming more sophisticated in the pursuit of their criminal design,” stated. He further emphasized, “The NPC will diligently exercise its powers under the law against any party found to be in violation of the Data Privacy Act.” The post GCash crashes anew amid probe on possible glitch appeared first on Daily Tribune......»»
Hackers left customer data untouched — PLDT
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Training on COA compliance for government institutions
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Social Media Firms Shares Soar in Stock Market Debut
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Xinhua world economic news summary at 0900 GMT, March 17
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Xinhua world news summary at 0630 GMT, March 18
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