A SENIOR Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (SC) has expressed alarm over the proliferation of scam text messages containing the names of subscribers.
In his Twitter post on Tuesday, Associate Justice Marvic Leonen said, “Unsolicited or scam text messages on our phones already contain our names. This means that there is a data provider out there that has leaked or sold or been careless about our information. This makes all of us now vulnerable. Very dangerous.”
Leonen’s post solicited more than 2,000 retweets and more than 6,000 likes as of this writing.
Some of his followers also expressed apprehension over the rampant text scam and called on the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) and telecommunication companies to immediately act on a possible data breach.
“Can the NTC, Globe and Smart do something? The scary part is our senior[s] are receiving [text] messages claiming there were problems with their bank accounts, with links attached. I told my mom not to open any unknown number,” one of his followers said.
“I find this alarming. I thought I was the only one…. It’s quite shocking that these text scams contain my full name,” another one commented.
Sought for public guidance on the matter, State Counsel Gerald Vincent Sosa of the Department of Justice-Office of the Cybercrime (DOJ-OCC) admitted that he too received a text scam with his name and surname on it.
He said it was possible that these scammers managed to obtain the personal information of telco subscribers through data leak or through some other means.
He cited the membership forms for some business establishments being filled out by availing customers as one of the possible sources of data leak, although he admitted that it would really be difficult to pinpoint the source of the data leak or how these scammers were actually able to obtain these data.
“There is data leak. It is impossible that they would be able to randomly get our names and numbers,” Sosa said.
He explained that unauthorized processing and improper disposal of data is punishable under the Data Privacy Act of 2012.
Any complaint for violation of the provisions of the Data Privacy Act, according to Sosa, may be brought before the National Privacy Commission.
As precautionary measures, Sosa advised cell-phone users to immediately block the number of text scammers and activate cell-phone settings or apps that would screen or block calls or text messages from unknown numbers.