Poe seeks to refile SIM card registration bill

Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 15) — Senator Grace Poe said she will refile the proposed SIM card registration bill in the 19th Congress to fight scam text messages.

"Unless a law is passed, the bombardment of unwanted text messages will persist. We need more than band-aid solutions to these unrelenting scams," Poe was quoted as saying in a statement on Wednesday.

While the National Telecommunications Commission and telco players have been doing their part to warn consumers against text scams, the scheme continues to proliferate in the absence of a law to combat it.

The senator said that without the bill, Filipinos become "vulnerable to fraudulent transactions that place their sensitive data such as bank accounts, passwords, profiles, among other information, at risk."

National Privacy Commissioner Mon Liboro said in November an "organized global syndicate" was behind the scam offering fake jobs to the public.

READ: Fraudsters behind text scams offering jobs 'sophisticated', 'adaptive'

In April, however, President Rodrigo Duterte vetoed the measure calling for the mandatory registration of SIM cards of mobile phone users.

The vetoed bill also seeks to require social media networks to get the real names and phone numbers of users when they create accounts.

Lawmakers earlier said that this provision could help stamp out troll farms.