Smishing has been hugging the news lately brought about by an alarming number of cases of personalized scam messages received by a lot of people. Personalized because it has either your name on them or the name of somebody you know. And this situation is bringing to the fore the weaknesses of our digital ecosystem.
We are beginning to see players trying to point fingers at each other as the possible cause of the riddle. They include data aggregators, mobile financial apps, negligent LGUs who have accumulated filled-up contact tracing forms, and telcos. Several government offices including enforcement agencies mandated to protect consumers are cramming to find the root of the problem, and the people behind it as well as possible solutions to address the situation.
Unsolicited messages are evolving, and scammers are getting bolder and much more sophisticated. As late as last year, the kind of smishing messages were usually generalized ones that supposedly offer job opportunities and financial offers but did not include your name or names and actual phone numbers of people in your directory.