VietNamNet Bridge – Viettel Telecom has been declared the most effective mobile operator in the fight against spam messages.

Viettel staff busy serving customers. Viettel was chosen as the best mobile operator for dealing with spam messages.

The number of users reporting scams to the operator in the first six months of this year fell by 90 per cent.

On the other hand, Vinaphone was reported to have had the most spam messages in the same period.

This was announced by the Viet Nam Computer Emergency Reponse Teams (VNCERT), whose the overall number of spam messages fell by about 60 per cent compared to 2012, according to its statistics.

Mobile network operators have built a system to discover and stop spams based on the frequency of key words in their contents.

A representative from Vinaphone told BizHub that spam did not originate with the company, but from private individuals and organisations.

"Vinaphone recommends users do not reply or call back when receiving these messages," she said.

"Messages on promotions and awards apparently sent from the mobile network can be checked on our official website (www.vinaphone.com.vn) or by phoning 19001091," she further said.

So far this year, network operators have blocked about 300,000 subscribers from sending messages considered as scam (unsolicited and unwanted text messages). It has also cancelled the accounts of 141,000 persistent spam senders.

The Ministry of Information and Communications has investigated 200 individuals for sending spam messages and investigated 21 companies.

To date, it has fined individuals and companies a total of VND2.6 billion (nearly US$124,000) for breaches of the telecoms law.

Meanwhile, statistics also show that there is an increasing amount of malware (viruses that can steal or destroy contents) being reported on computer networks.

In May, 241 instances of malware were discovered. However, this fell to 102 in June.

The total number of viruses reported for the year to date are 10 times higher than for the same period last year.

Attacks on Government websites were said to be the most serious. Some of the attackers tried to change the front pages and contents of online publications.

Source: VNS