The South Korean government, in collaboration with the Korea Telecommunications Operators Association (KTOA) and the three major mobile carriers, has announced the launch of the ‘Illegal Spam Number Blocking System’ on the 17th to combat illegal spam text messages. This system enables real-time verification of sender numbers and blocks messages from invalid numbers before they reach users.
The Ministry of Science and ICT and KTOA developed the system as part of follow-up measures to the ‘Comprehensive Strategy for Preventing Illegal Spam’ announced last November. Previously, verification required account registration, but now messaging service providers can continuously monitor and block accounts linked to invalid numbers.
Through this system, messaging relay and resale companies can verify the validity of bulk message sender numbers, while mobile carriers can preemptively block spam sent from invalid numbers. The ministry emphasized that this real-time verification will significantly reduce illegal spam and related phishing crimes.
In addition, the ministry has established pre-blocking standards for international bulk messages, requiring foreign messaging companies to comply with the same legal and technical obligations as domestic providers. It also introduced Google’s Enhanced Fraud Protection (EFP) to block malicious code installation at the device level.