Belgian government to step up fight against SMS fraud

Belgian Telecommunications minister Petra De Sutter (Groen) has reached an agreement with telecom operators to step up the fight against “smishing”, or SMS fraud. A budget of two million euros from the European recovery plan has been made available, the minister announced on Sunday.

With this agreement, the minister wants to enable operators to develop software to combat fraudulent SMS. The new software should be operational within a year.

According to figures from IMEC research centre, the end-of-year festivities see an increased activity of fraudulent “smishing”.

“Last year, the FLUBOT virus caused thousands of victims. Users mechanically clicked on a link sent to them via SMS, which allowed an application to intercept their access codes to mobile banking services,” De Sutter said.

The agreement will initially be signed by Telenet and Proximus.

(VIV)

_{#FlandersNewsService | Vice-prime minister and minister of Civil Services and State-owned companies Petra De Sutter during a press conference of Proximus in Brussels, 27 June 2022 © BELGA PHOTO (LAURIE DIEFFEMBACQ)}