Palace: Spam texts on fake job offers ‘cause for concern’ as privacy issue

MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang on Tuesday said the spate of text messages offering fake jobs is a “cause for concern,” especially because it violates privacy.

Cabinet Secretary and acting presidential spokesperson Karlo Nograles said the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) is already investigating the matter.

“Oo, siyempre, ‘pag (Yes, of course that is) privacy issue ‘yan. It’s always a cause for concern not only for IATF but for government and for the public siyempre,” he said in a Palace briefing when asked if the issue is a cause for concern for the government.

“’Yung NTC is already investigating the matter but of course it is also within the purview and mandate ng National Privacy Commission to also investigate the matter. Hintayin natin yung kanilang investigation,” he added.

(Let’s wait for their investigation.)

Amid concerns that phone numbers were sourced from contact-tracing forms, an official of the NPC said the scam was orchestrated by international syndicates but there is no evidence that phone numbers were obtained through contact-tracing forms.

Senator Joel Villanueva, chairperson of the Senate labor committee, earlier urged the NPC to investigate what he described as the “epidemic of text scams,” after mobile phone subscribers complained of receiving phony job offers via text.

He said the apparent rise in texts being blasted to mobile phone users could be the “forbidden fruit of a data breach or data sale somewhere.”