The government has decided to block messages from invalid numbers by verifying caller IDs in collaboration with the Korea Telecommunications Operators Association (KTOA) and the three major mobile carriers. The Ministry of Science and ICT and KTOA announced that they will launch the ‘Illegal Spam Number Blocking System’ on the 17th, which can verify and preemptively block numbers used to send illegal spam.
Illegal spam is not only an inconvenience to users but also a serious social issue causing economic damage by being used for phishing and smishing. A significant portion of bulk illegal spam messages are sent by altering caller IDs to invalid numbers, such as canceled, suspended, or unassigned phone numbers, to avoid tracking.
In response, the Ministry of Science and ICT, as a follow-up to the ‘Comprehensive Measures to Prevent Illegal Spam’ announced last November, decided to jointly establish a blocking system with KTOA and wired and wireless telecom operators to verify the validity of bulk message caller IDs in real-time. Through this system, message intermediaries and resellers can verify the validity of bulk message caller IDs, and mobile carriers can preemptively block illegal spam sent from invalid numbers.
Additionally, the Ministry of Science and ICT has established preemptive blocking standards for international bulk messages to ensure that international message operators comply with the same legal and technical obligations as domestic operators. Last month, they also introduced Google’s Enhanced Fraud Protection (EFP) to block malware that was not intercepted during the sending stage, aiming to provide practical measures against illegal spam that citizens can feel.