Fresh crackdown on mobile phone fraudsters targeting Hong Kong announced by watchdog; service providers to use warnings from May 1
- Anti-fraud voice and message alerts to warn call recipients about potential scams to be added to all numbers prefixed with ‘+852’
- Telecoms watchdog says service providers had already started to block overseas numbers that mimic Hong Kong landlines
Anti-fraud voice alerts or messages to warn Hong Kong mobile phone users about potential scammers will be displayed on all calls with the “+852” prefix from next month, the city’s communications watchdog has said.
The effort is part of a wider push by authorities to tackle swindles carried out over the phone, which jumped 148 per cent in 2022 over the year before and cost victims a total of HK$1 billion (US$127.4 million).
The Office of the Communications Authority (OFCA) on Tuesday said it would also launch a pilot scheme on real name registration for SMS text senders by the end of the year.
Chaucer Leung Chung-yin, the OFCA director general of communications, said major mobile networks had already started to use special voice or text messages to alert users to incoming overseas calls carrying the Hong Kong “+852” dialling code.
The message tells call recipients: “Call is from outside Hong Kong. Beware of deception.”
The service – with voice alerts in Cantonese, Mandarin and English, and text warnings in English and Chinese – will be provided free of charge by telecoms operators without the requirement for customers to preregister or change phone settings.
