Consumers are urged to exercise heightened vigilance against the fraudulent practice of vishing, which involves the use of voice calls to deceive and manipulate individuals.

PLDT Inc. and its wireless subsidiary, Smart Communications Inc. (Smart), said on Wednesday that vishing scams often employ sophisticated techniques to impersonate legitimate organizations or individuals.

Since they make it challenging for unsuspecting targets to identify the true nature of the interaction, the telco company said customers should remain keen.

“Criminals are quick to adapt. Now that our new firewall has made it harder for them to send text scams, they now resort to calling customers on their mobile phones or via over-the-top apps to lure them into revealing critical personal data,” warned Jojo Gendrano, SVP and chief information security officer at PLDT and Smart.

“Once criminals possess the necessary information, they will then take over the customer’s account, empty their savings, or use their credit card information to make unauthorized transactions,” Gendrano said.

Sophisticated cybercriminals

PLDT and Smart also pointed out that cybercriminals are getting more sophisticated, too. They have employed Artificial Intelligence (AI) to generate life-like voices or mimic the voice of a victim’s close acquaintance to gain their trust.

In the first half of July, Smart introduced its newly upgraded network firewall, boosting its ability to eliminate text scams.

This advanced cybersecurity tool blocked a remarkable 30 million malicious texts in a single day, resulting in a significant decrease in the number of SMShing messages reported by customers during that month.