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| Title | THE GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCES A ROBUST SET OF COMPREHENSIVE PREVENTIVE MEASURES TO ERADICATE ILLEGAL SPAM | ||
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| Date | 2024-12-11 | Read | 1291 |
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- Imposing penalty surcharges on mobile carriers, and text relay operators and resale carriers for overlooking illegal spam - Preventing the entry of unqualified business entities into the market and removing problematic business entities from the market - Developing a dual blocking system to cover both the sending and reception of illegal spam, and strengthening a preventive system for illegal spam sent from overseas - Ensuring the implementation of comprehensive measures by establishing standing consultative bodies involving both government organizations and public and private entities The Korea Communications Commission (KCC, Acting Chairperson Kim Tae-kyu) and the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT, Minister Yoo Sang-im) announced a set of “Comprehensive Preventive Measures against Illegal Spam (Comprehensive Measures) on November 28, at Government Complex Seoul. Illegal spam leads to digital violence, which causes serious property damage to the public, including phishing, smishing, and voice phishing, going beyond mere inconvenience. In the first half of 2024, there have been 210 million spam reports, with the number of spam reports reaching a record high of 47million in June. Accordingly, KCC and MSIT conducted an emergency inspection from June to July. They found that 75% of the illegal spam in the first half of 2024 is originated from mass texting services, and punished business entities* once found to be in violation of their obligations. As a result, the number of illegal spam reports has sharply decreased ** since July. However, they still remain a tool for criminal activities, highlighting the continued need for strong countermeasures to eradicate it. * (KCC) 30 out of 33 surveyed business entities were found to be in violation of their obligations to block illegal spam in accordance with the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection. (MSIT) 5 out of a total of 10 text relay operators were found to be in violation of their obligations to prevent forgery of telephone numbers. ** Spam Report Statistics: From 47.47 million in June → 37.43 million in July → 23.63 million in August → 22.28 million in September Both the organizations have developed a total of five strategies and twelve detailed tasks for their implementation with an aim to fundamentally prevent illegal spam. The five strategies are: reclaiming unlawful profits at all stages of illegal spam; normalizing the distribution market for mass texting; enhancing the blocking of illegal spam transmissions, blocking the reception of illegal spam; establishing governance to block spam. Strategy 1: Reclaiming unlawful profits incurred in all stages of illegal spam There have been ongoing cases where punishments for illegal spam senders have been insufficient, and business entities have turned a blind eye to and left unattended illegal spam. To tackle this, we will impose penalty surcharges on those who sent illegal spam as well as mobile carriers, text relay operators and resale carriers, and others who overlooked and neglected the sending of illegal spam while providing relevant services. Especially, we will confiscate the criminal profits of those who sent illegal spam. Strategy 2: Normalizing the distribution market for mass texting Worse yet, text resale carriers are rampant with 1,168 identified as of September 2024 due to low entry barriers and many of these carriers are repeatedly engaging in illegal activities. Accordingly, we plan to strengthen registration requirements for business entities, including making an authentication system for mass texting mandatory and establishing grounds for punishment. We also plan to suspend business operations and revoke business registration for business entities engaging in problematic activities as well as force them out of the market. Strategy 3: Enhancing the blocking of illegal spam transmissions There have been ongoing issues with illegal spam sent using burner phones and stolen phone numbers, which are hard to trace. However, there has been a lack of proactive system to block such spam. In response to this, regulatory and technical system will be strengthened to prevent this type of illegal spam. ‘Spam message numbers and accounts management system’ will be established to require text service providers to verify the validity of outgoing phone numbers and accounts for texting services. Also, a dual blocking system for preventing the forgery of outgoing phone numbers will be established to enable mobile carriers to proactively block the reception of forged outgoing calls. In addition, users of mass texting services will be required to go through an identification process whenever they send texts. Multifactor Authentication will be required for logging in, and proactive system will be set up to comprehensively block illegal and malicious texts, including those containing phishing URL. Strategy 4: Blocking the reception of illegal spam Next, the filtering system will be strengthened to block the reception of illegal spam on cell phone terminals, even after such spam has been sent. Previously, users had to install additional applications to check texts filtered by mobile carriers. In response, a separate inbox for blocked texts will be created on the terminal and the filtering performance will be improved. In addition, smartphones produced in Korea will be equipped with a spam filtering function that uses on-device AI to further block spam. In addition, as an effort to tackle the recent increase in illegal spam messages originating from overseas, messages from major global companies will be added to a whitelist for management purposes, while messages outside the whitelist will be placed in a separate overseas inbox. Efforts will be strengthened to detect and block overseas malicious messages containing phishing URLs. Among other things, we plan to establish pre-blocking standards for international mass texting, and a system to block international messages from unverified senders. Strategy 5: Establishing governance to block spam In addition, a collaborative and joint response system will be established to address the barriers between governmental organizations which have arisen due to the division of responsibilities for spam-related tasks between KCC, MSIT, Personal Information Protection Commission, and Korean National Police Agency. At the same time, a private-public standing consultative body will be launched in December to reduce illegal spam sent by problematic business entities and to discuss self-regulation measures. In the meantime, phased measures are planned to be implemented to prevent balloon effects resulting from the regulation of domestic mass texting services from spreading and increasing illegal spam in other messaging platforms such as KakaoTalk or Telegram. The KCC Acting Chairperson said, “These comprehensive measures demonstrate the government’s strong commitment to protecting the public from the damage caused by illegal spam. The KCC will continue to implement regulatory and technical measures to foster a safe digital environment by fundamentally eradicating illegal spam.” The MSIT Minister announced, “Illegal spam has served as an entry point for digital crime infringing the daily life. With these comprehensive measures, a fundamental resolution has been formulated for all stages of illegal spam. We look forward to seeing the public no longer suffer from illegal spam and enjoy a safe digital life thanks to fundamental measures to block it.” ### The Korea Communications Commission |
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241128 (보도자료) 정부, 불법스팸 근절을 위한 강력한 「불법스팸 방지 종합대책」 발표.hwpx
20241128_News_Release_Spam Eradication.docx |
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