Globe warns customers against new phishing threats, blocks 203 sites in Q1 2022

Globe has warned the public against a phishing attack targeting its customers using messages that mimic its official communications, with its cybersecurity team stepping up measures to fend off spam and online scams.

The recent phishing attack targeting Globe customers makes use of a message with its subject and contents presented as a work email invoice. This is an effort to deceive the recipient into clicking the link on the said email, which then connects the user to a phishing site that asks for login details. Those duped by these messages end up sharing sensitive information to fraudsters.

“We urge the public not to respond to any of these emails nor click on any suspicious links, and more importantly, refrain from disclosing any personal information online without first thoroughly verifying the credibility of emails or messages,” said Anton Bonifacio, Globe Chief Information Security Officer.

Phishing is a common type of online fraud where criminals impersonate an organization or individual through a legitimate-looking email or text message. This is done to deceive recipients into providing the requested personal information.

Bonifacio suggested the use of stronger passwords and enabling Multi-Factor Authentication to better protect online accounts.

As part of its continuing effort against online fraud, Globe blocks spam messages using a series of filters, such as anti-spam fingerprint, URL blacklist, access control blacklist and regular expression, to help prevent service abuse.  It also performs a periodic review of the messages captured by the discovery filters, and employs a threat intelligence subscription which monitors traffic to find current campaigns and active spammers both on-net and inbound.

These online protection efforts have helped the company block 203 phishing sites so far in 2022, which includes 112 bank and 91 GCash phishing sites pretending to be from legitimate pages of these organizations. Globe also successfully blocked 208 online gambling sites, as well as 705 child pornography domains and 64,132 URLs within the first quarter of this year.

“We continue to work closely with banks and online retailers to block fraud messages and mobile numbers, knowing that online safety requires a concerted effort by all stakeholders,” said Bonifacio.

Globe’s efforts against phishing is part of its goal to protect technological innovations, which are critical to economic growth and development. This is part of its commitment to infrastructure and innovation targets under the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

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