One year since the launch of the Voice Phishing Integrated Response Team... Block criminal use numbers and SNS

One year since the launch of the Voice Phishing Integrated Response Team... Block criminal use numbers and SNS

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Ji-eun Han = The amount of voice phishing damage last month was 25.7 billion won, a 76.4% decrease from the same month last year, recording the lowest monthly figure since 2023.

In the same month, the damage from new types of scams such as investment leading rooms and dating scams amounted to 58.4 billion won, more than twice the damage from voice phishing.

On the 29th, the National Police Agency held an event marking the first anniversary of the launch of the 'Telecommunication Financial Fraud Integrated Response Team' at the KT Gwanghwamun Building in Jongno-gu, Seoul and announced these results.

The Integrated Response Team was launched on September 29 of the same year by gathering the response capabilities of the National Police Agency and financial and communications authorities in the wake of the 'Comprehensive Measures to Eradicate Voice Phishing' announced by the government in August of last year.

From January to August this year, 8,584 cases of voice phishing occurred, a 49% decrease from the same period last year (16,765 cases).

The amount of damage also decreased by 56% from 885.6 billion won to 387.1 billion won.

The number of monthly incidents and amount of damage were lower than the same month of the previous year for 11 consecutive months from October last year to August this year.

Last month, 1,127 new scams occurred, causing 58.4 billion won in damage.

Both the number of incidents and the amount of damage are the lowest monthly figures since the integrated response team was launched.

The integrated response team consulted on 281,178 reports and tips as of the end of August this year.

The police explained that by increasing the number of counseling personnel and establishing a 24-hour response system, the response rate to reports averaged 97.4% from launch until August of this year.

Since last November, a system has been implemented to block reported criminal use phone numbers within 10 minutes, and as of August this year, 118,927 cases have been blocked.

About 44,300 phone lines opened for criminal purposes were also analyzed and preemptively blocked.

As of August this year, 32,753 people were prevented from being harmed by sending emergency notifications to people who were found to have installed malicious apps or accessed phishing sites, and dispatching police officers when necessary.

About 61,000 social networking service (SNS) accounts used in the crime were also blocked.

The police have been implementing a suspicious account transaction suspension system since last June to respond to some new scams that are excluded from account payment suspension under current law.

Legislation is also being promoted for the 'Act on Prevention of Multiple Damage Fraud Using Telecommunications' to comprehensively respond to new and variant frauds.

Kim Jong-cheol, acting Commissioner General of the National Police Agency, said, "The integrated response team has established a one-stop comprehensive response system encompassing finance, communications, and investigations and has shifted to a focus on prevention and blocking. Please make efforts to fundamentally block the evolving phishing crime through organic collaboration with related agencies."