Nearly 99 percent of fraudulent telephone calls can be intercepted after the government worked with telecoms to block incoming calls from numbers beginning with +886 0 to +886 8, the National Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday.
The service was launched in May to curb a rise in scam calls, and since July 17, subscribers of Chunghwa Telecom’s landline services who receive a call from numbers beginning with +886 9 hear a warning in Mandarin and Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) that the call might be a scam.
The NCC last week said that the same warning might be available for mobile phone service subscribers in the middle of this month.
Photo: Yang Mien-chieh, Taipei Times
The number of phone calls beginning with +886 0 to +886 8 has dropped from 1.98 million in May to 745,000 in July, with the interception rate rising from 91.9 percent in May, 98.5 percent in June and 98.65 percent in July, NCC data showed.
The number of phone calls beginning with +886 9 surged from 8.16 million in April to 14.43 million in May, but declined to 14.35 million in June and 10.3 million in July, the data showed.
The success of intercepting calls beginning with +886 0 to +886 8 has helped reduce the number of phone scams reported to the government’s 165 anti-fraud hotline, from 2,346 in April and 1,600 in May, to 914 in June and 823 in July, the commission said.
In phone scams, which are usually international calls rerouted to Taiwan, the caller often pretends they are from a government agency or financial institution, it said.
Intercepting the numbers at the international telephone switch network decreases people’s exposure to scam calls, it said.
Although the number of phone scams reported to the 165 anti-fraud hotline has fallen, and technology to intercept and warn people about scam calls has proven to be effective, the commission said that there is still room to improve the technology.
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