SKT Fortifies Voice Phishing Defense During Lunar New Year Holiday... Establishes 'Cyber Threat Response Team'

[Asia Economy Reporter Oh Su-yeon] SK Telecom has expressed concerns that voice phishing and spam/smishing fraud damages are likely to increase during the Lunar New Year holiday period, urging customers to exercise special caution.

In particular, due to the recent economic downturn and high interest rates, there has been an increase in loan scam cases targeting breadwinners in their 40s and 50s who need loans, as well as cases impersonating government agencies such as the prosecution and the Financial Supervisory Service.

The National Police Agency has created the "10 Commandments" to prevent voice phishing, spam, and smishing damages, sharing countermeasures to block fraud damages in advance.

10 Commandments for Preventing Phone Financial Fraud [Provided by the National Police Agency]

SKT is taking preemptive measures against increasingly sophisticated and intelligent voice phishing, spam messages, and smishing crimes. Since March 2021, SKT has been cooperating with the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency to block outgoing calls to suspected voice phishing numbers, and is also operating an AI-based spam and smishing message filtering system.

Through these efforts, SKT blocked 104,990 voice phishing calls in 2022 (a 3.2-fold increase compared to the previous year) and prevented about 72,800 customers from making calls to criminal numbers. When converted using the social value measurement formula (SV: number of voice phishing call blocks × financial fraud victimization rate (3.5%) × average damage amount per voice phishing crime), approximately 84.6 billion KRW in fraud damages were prevented.

Additionally, the AI-based spam and smishing filtering system blocked about 650 million spam text messages, approximately 4.15 million smishing texts, and about 560,000 voice spam calls.

SKT plans to continue its efforts to protect customers from various telecommunication fraud crimes by enhancing cooperation with related agencies including the National Police Agency and by advancing the AI-based spam and smishing filtering system.

Meanwhile, in the organizational restructuring carried out at the end of 2022, SKT established a dedicated team called the ‘Cyber Threat Response Team’ to respond to various threats and protect the diverse customer information SKT holds and customers using SKT services.

Going forward, the Cyber Threat Response Team will develop and implement response strategies not only for existing security threats but also for social engineering crimes such as spam, smishing, voice phishing, and ransomware based on new methods.

Furthermore, SKT is proactively responding to spam, smishing, and voice phishing through services it currently provides.

Using SKT’s call app, T Phone, helps prevent damages. T Phone displays the spam type of the number to users during incoming and outgoing calls and phone number searches, and also shows information such as ‘OO Bank Customer Center.’ It is advisable to be cautious when making or receiving calls from numbers that cannot be verified or have no information on T Phone.

Also, customers can download the free T Spam Filtering app provided by SKT to block basic spam and smishing numbers. The T Spam Filtering app allows blocking by text message, number, or area code, and can also block unwanted strings. The app is available for download on One Store, App Store, and Google Play Store.

It is also important to read and familiarize oneself in advance with warning messages about spam, smishing, and voice phishing sent by telecom companies, financial institutions, and government agencies. Additionally, installing smishing detection antivirus software on smartphones can be an effective way to prevent damages.