gettyimagesbank
Koreans are receiving an increasing number of mobile spam messages disguised as investment tips and online dating services.
A total of 4.128 billion spam text messages were sent in Korea last year, according to the Korea Communications Commission, the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) and the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, Sunday. The figure more than tripled in four years from 1.21 billion cases in 2019.
With the surge in spam texts, the number of "smishing" reports filed with the KISA last year amounted to 1,673 cases, an eight-fold increase from four years ago, while losses jumped 36 times to 14.4 billion won. Smishing is a tactic that tricks victims into divulging sensitive information, downloading malware or sending money.
The government believes that the number of text retransmission companies that send large quantities of mobile text messages has increased since 2020, and that a large amount of spam and texts are sent to accounts by using stolen personal information.
Management authorities such as the Ministry of Science and ICT are collaborating with police and telecommunications companies to filter scam text messages, but it is practically impossible to filter all of them.
Under criminal law, charges such as attempted fraud and violation of the Telecommunications Business Act may be applied, but it is difficult to arrest suspects of such crimes.
With the popularization of social media, access by spam scammers through Instagram and Telegram as well as text messages have also grown more common.
It is also popular to use so-called “romance scams,” which evolved from a method of spraying loose texts to build intimacy for a few days or weeks for the goal of extorting money.
Most romance scam texts like this are sent by Naver Line IDs, which open with a message such as "I want to make friends" and "I look forward to hearing from you."
"Of the 25 million spam reports received in September, about 800,000 are text messages in the form of romance scams," Jung Won-ki, head of KISA's digital user protection team explained, adding that the number of such texts continues to increase.
With the implementation of the revised Capital Markets Act, which tightened regulations on "investment reading rooms" here in August, the number of messages linking to illegal stock reading rooms decreased, while the number of messages in the form of luring friendship or even inducing sex services increased, the KISA estimates.
Experts worry that there is no way yet to legally regulate such crimes until actual theft occurs.
"We cannot punish them for fraud under the criminal law just because they sent a text message saying, 'Let's be friends,'" Jung said. "From the perspective of users, it is most important not to respond."
Hwang Seok-jin, a professor at Dongguk University Graduate School of International Information Protection, also said, "We should block phone numbers or IDs without looking into texts we don't know in the first place. The government should discuss with companies to strengthen the authentication process when creating accounts, or take measures to prevent them from creating more accounts for five to 10 years if their accounts are blocked due to illegal activities."