New guidelines to combat scams would facilitate coordination across ministries, with the goal of stopping up to NT$10 billion (US$307.49 million) in scams and about 60,000 fraudulent ads from being posted annually, the Executive Yuan said yesterday.
The new guidelines follow amendments to the Fraud Crime Hazard Prevention Act (詐欺犯罪危害防制條例), Code of Criminal Procedure (刑事訴訟法), Communication Security and Surveillance Act (通訊保障及監察法), and Money Laundering Control Act (洗錢防制法)by the legislature in July.
The guidelines hope to increase the public’s ability to spot and prevent scams, and increase penalties for scamming, it said.
Photo: CNA
The Ministry of the Interior said it aims to promote awareness of the rule of law among people of different age groups through 500 events and 140 million text messages, targeting an audience of 50 million annually to prevent scams.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said it would implement a real-name system for advertisements on the Internet by next month, and has talked with Google, Line and Meta about such systems.
Google and Line said they would implement the system, and Meta “pledged” to introduce it, the digital ministry said.
Efforts to prevent malicious software from taking users to scam-related sites hope to block 30,000 domains, it said, adding that it is working with Apple to set limits on online transactions.
The digital ministry said it is also working to establish a third-party virtual bank payment inquiry system to mitigate scam losses.
The National Communications Commission (NCC) issued a report saying that it is considering establishing a database to verify user identity and restrict high-risk users from applying for telecommunication services.
The NCC said it has a list of 2.21 million SIM cards purchased overseas, but it has only gone through 100,000 numbers, so it vowed to step up efforts next month to look through the remaining 2.1 million.
The Financial Supervisory Commission said it is pushing measures to ask credit card issuers to increase their monitoring of credit card transactions to prevent fraud.
Its credit card fraud prevention reporting platform hopes to share information with banks and institutions that issue credit cards to mitigate risk, it added.
The Ministry of Justice said it is increasing the rate of confiscating illegal proceeds by 3 percent per year and is working closely with international partners to reduce overseas crime and crack down on cross-border scams.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
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