Deputy Minister of Information and Communication Pham Duc Long (Photo: VietnamPlus)
Hanoi (VNA) – A representative of the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) has said that in September and October of 2023, a pilot call identification programme will be deployed, under which official calls by State agencies will feature those agencies’ IDs.
At the monthly press conference of the Ministry of Information and Communications for September, Deputy Minister Pham Duc Long said that scam calls and spams are a burning issue that needs to be resolved.
Marketing and scam calls often impersonate public agencies such as the police, procuracy agencies and banks. Therefore, the Deputy Minister said that the MIC has worked with such agencies to carry out a pilot programme that will have their ID displayed on their phone calls to citizens.
Network operators have completed technical solutions for the programme and will deploy the programme in September, October of this year among select State agencies.
“All calls from State-owned agencies will show the agencies’ IDs. Incoming calls without displaying the IDs are all scam calls," Long said.
In addition, promotional messages and calls from businesses are also clearly regulated in Decree 91.
According to the Decree, businesses that send promotional messages or make promotional calls must also have their names displayed. The MIC will strengthen inspections and businesses that make promotional calls without registering their brand names will be subject to administrative fines.
Nguyen Phong Nha, Deputy Director of Department of Telecommunications under the MIC said that in fact, scam calls and spam messages can be spread from both genuine and unregistered subscribers.
To prevent unregistered subscribers, mobile and telecom services providers have recently implemented eKYC (electronic authentication) and video call (video authentication) measures to ensure information of new subscribers must be verified.
Information of subscribers must match information of the persons who make the registration. This will serve to minimize inaccurate information of subscribers.
In addition, authorities have asked telecommunications businesses to remove 12.5 million unauthorized Subscriber Identity Module (SIMs) from the system. These are SIM cards whose owners have not updated their personal information as requested to the stated deadlines, which were made public.
Deputy Director of the MIC’s Telecommunications Department Nguyen Phong Nha (Photo: VietnamPlus)
To prevent the spread of scam calls, the Department of Telecommunications believes that more proactive involvement from relevant agencies, organisations and the community are needed.
Accordingly, schools, banks, and hospitals need to proactively disseminate official phone numbers and contact channels for users. The Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism need to enforce measures on service providers if they advertise through unauthorized channels.
Individual users must be aware of personal information protection and of the importance of using official and registered SIM cards. SIMs are associated with many daily activities such as VNeID accounts, and more critically, digital payment services.
The Department of Telecommunications recommends that people be aware of receiving calls and requests from unknown numbers. Users can also install and use spam or unknown call blocking or warning services provided by the network.
Deputy Minister Pham Duc Long said that unregistered SIMs, dubbed junk SIMs, often create spam messages and marketing calls. However, spam calls and messages can also be generated by registered SIM owners, which is part of marketing activities./.
