CEBU CITY, Philippines —If you receive an unsolicited call asking for personal and sensitive information, you should be on the alert.
The Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) reminds the public to be wary of vishing or voice phising.
In a post on its Facebook page, the DICT Field Operations Office for Region VII and VIII, Visayas Cluster 2, has explained that vishing or voice phishing is a type of scam through a telephone.
The public should not just trust anyone who contacts them as it could be a scam.
The caller would aim to get personal, sensitive or financial information from a potential victim, according to the DICT Visayas Cluster II post.
Usually, the caller pretends to be an employee of a bank where the person called has an account. The caller will inform the bank client that his or her account is compromised and then ask for sensitive information.
Meanwhile, the Philippine National Police Anti-Cyber Crime Group (PNP-ACG) defines vishing as a socially engineered technique used for stealing information or money from consumers using the telephone network.
The term comes from combining “voice” with “phishing,” which are online scams that persuades people to give personal information.
According to the PNP-ACG, vishing scams use voice solicitation to get information or money from consumers or businesses. The scammer calls the victim and attempts to use social engineering techniques to trick the victim into doing something, often to give credit or debit card details or send money.
The PNP-ACG is encouraging consumers to protect themselves by suspecting any unsolicited message that suggests that they are targets of illegal activity, no matter what the medium or apparent source.
“Rather than calling a given number in any unsolicited message, a consumer should directly call the institution named, using a number that is known to be valid, to verify all recent activity and to ensure that the account information has not been tampered,” the PNP-ACG suggested.
The public could coordinate or report any possible vishing incidents to the DICT at FB: Philippines National CERT; or email cert-ph@dict.gov.ph and through Mobile:09214942917 (Smart)/ 09561542042 (Globe) or Landline: 8920-0101 loc. 1708./dbs