From July, Voice Guidance for Incoming International Calls... Preventing Voice Phishing

Starting next month, when a call comes from overseas, an automatic 안내 message will be played to prevent voice phishing damage exploiting international calls. Even in cases where the phone number of a user in Korea is stolen and received in roaming form, impersonating family members, the call will be automatically blocked.

The Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) announced on the 29th that they have developed this service together with SKT, KT, and LG Uplus, and will provide it starting in July.

After establishing the ‘Voice Phishing Communication Sector Measures’ last year, the Ministry of Science and ICT has been promoting technical and institutional measures to prevent voice phishing damage. This new service is a follow-up measure to the ‘Voice Phishing Communication Sector Measures’ and was developed to prevent crimes that exploit international calls, where voice phishing organizations set up overseas call centers in countries such as China, making criminal tracking and investigation difficult.

[Photo by Ministry of Science and ICT]

From July, when an international call is received, the three major carriers will provide not only a display of ‘International Call (in Korean)’ on the device screen but also a voice 안내 service to the recipient upon call connection, saying “This is an international call” or “This call is from overseas.” The same service will be provided to users of MVNOs as well.

Additionally, to prevent criminal organizations from stealing the phone numbers of users in Korea and falsely displaying the number in overseas roaming form to impersonate family members and misuse it for voice phishing, if it is clear that the user is in Korea, the normal roaming status of the number will be checked before blocking the reception of international calls. Since this service is provided based on location information, it will initially be offered between users of the same carrier.

The Ministry of Science and ICT stated, “Criminal methods targeting mobile communication users are becoming more sophisticated and elaborate by abusing converged technologies and new services,” and added, “In the digital era where smartphones are commonplace, the Ministry will actively promote various policies such as technology development and institutional arrangements in cooperation with carriers, manufacturers, and related ministries to eradicate voice phishing crimes exploiting communication services.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.