Smart steps up efforts to protect customers against scams and frauds amidst continued proliferation of smartphone-aided scams. Smart also called on the Government to exercise oversight on the legitimate use of cell site simulators, which have been found to be used by scammers as ‘fake cell towers’ for sending out text scams to mobile users.

Smart warns the public that scammers use ‘fake cell towers’ to send text scams to mobile users, and even use ‘Smart’ as the sender name. These devices are able to lock on to mobile phones within a specified radius, enabling the scammers to push messages directly to subscribers’ devices without having to go through its network.