Spam and fake calls are a global problem that has emerged in Vietnam in recent years, a representative of the Telecommunications Department said.

The prevention of spam calls is carried out by telecommunications firms in a closed process with four steps: Identifying subscribers suspected of spreading spam calls; verifying calls to determine whether or not they are spam calls; preventing the calls; and performing customer care services and solving complaints.

The representative said that this task has been done well by network operators. Since July they have blocked outgoing calls of more than 34,700 subscribers who made spam calls, including 16,288 subscribers in September alone.

However, this official said that mobile service users have not cooperated well with network operators to prevent spam calls. In the process of authenticating spam calls, network operators will text or call service users to ask if it was a spam call. Only 5-7% of the users reply to such messages or calls.

“To solve the problem, the Telecommunications Department and network operators have called for better cooperation from mobile subscribers. Technically, we have asked network operators to cooperate in preventing inter-network spam calls beginning next week,” the official of the Telecommunications Department said.

The official also provided new information in the process of handling spam calls. He said that so far, the prevention of spam calls has been implemented by network operators in coordination with relevant authorities in accordance with the Law on the Protection of Consumer Rights. According to Decree 91/2020 that took effect on October 1, 2020, there will be an additional mechanism to prevent spam calls.

Regarding the prevention of fake calls, network operators have blocked more than 9 million fake calls since July. In September alone, four operators prevented 3.3 million fake calls.

After network operators sent messages warning subscribers about fake calls, the proportion of subscribers answering calls made by strange numbers decreased from about 40% in June and July 2020 to below 10% at present. Reports of fake calls to the police, have dropped by 70%.

MT

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