Belgium's biggest mobile providers Telenet and Proximus have reported apparent successes after introducing anti-smishing platforms (a combination of SMS and phishing) to protect customers from SMS scams.
In early October, Telecoms Minister Petra De Sutter announced new software that enables operators to intervene immediately with the result that mobile phone users receive significantly fewer fraudulent SMS messages. The plans came as Belgium witnessed a rise in the number of such scams, which cost individuals almost €40 million in 2022 – typically claiming victims among the elderly and those with low incomes.
Proximus launched its new platform on 4 October, with early results showing 3.2 million blocked messages in just the first two weeks of operation. This amounted to an average of 229,000 messages detected and blocked daily. For its part, Telenet reports that it has blocked 2.4 million fraudulent messages since launching its platform.
The results are seen as a promising sign that the new technology has the potential to thwart most smishing attempts before they reach their intended recipients.
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The new platforms use artificial intelligence to detect bulk message sends from a single number or those containing suspicious links, improving the algorithm’s spam-detection capabilities.
Referring to the launch, Ben Appel, Corporate Affairs Lead at Proximus, called this a “major advance in the fight against smishing”.
Typically, fraudulent SMS messages come from an unknown number asking recipients to pay an outstanding bill or provide missing personal data. They often include links to fake websites with the intention of tricking the recipient or extracting money from them.
O. Apelblat
The Brussels Times
