GLOBE Telecom Inc. recorded a 79 percent drop in blocked spam SMS (short message service), or text messages, in the second quarter of 2024 from a year earlier.

The telco said that it intercepted a total of 235,998,731 spam text messages from January to March, substantially lower than the 1,104,502,921 messages blocked in the same quarter of 2023.

On a quarterly basis, blocked spam SMS messages also declined, down 35 percent in the second quarter from 362,773,894 messages three months earlier.

Further supporting this trend, the number of deactivated subscriber identity modules, or SIMs, reported via Globe's StopScam portal from April to June 2024, fell to 504 from 4,054 a year earlier, marking an 88-percent decrease.

Between the first and second quarters of 2024, the drop in deactivated SIMs was 40 percent, with the first three months of 2024 recording 841 deactivated numbers.

"We have observed a consistent decline in spam SMS — those that pass through the cellular network — as we continue to implement stringent filtering systems, including blocking person-to-person SMS with links," said Anton Bonifacio, Globe's chief information security officer and chief AI (artificial intelligence) officer.

Globe said the drop demonstrated the effectiveness of its spam filtering systems but also warned that scam tactics were changing.

It noted an increasing threat posed by spoofed SMS, where unscrupulous persons or groups impersonate SMS channels to lure unsuspecting victims into sharing personal information or clicking on malicious links.

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