The new Chinese call validation standard, CHAKEN, remains a mystery to most of the rest of the world, despite indications that CHAKEN will be live and protecting Chinese phone users this year. Big businesses with global footprints that are involved in the delivery of CHAKEN have been strangely tight-lipped about the technology, even though it is the subject of a published national standard within China. However, there are the first signs that some enterprising folks intend to sell CHAKEN to customers outside of China. East Money reported that a seminar on the international application of CHAKEN was held in Shenzhen during July.
A state-owned business called Eastern Communications Company, otherwise known as China Eastcom, has seemingly established a ‘China-ASEAN Cross-Border Trusted Identity Trust Center’, per the way Google translates such things. Given that 300,000 modern-day slaves are forced to work in scam call centers located in Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos, and that these three countries all belong to ASEAN, this could be the beginning of a major upgrade of China’s anti-scam strategy. If so, it will also have significant knock-on benefits for phone users all around the planet because these same scam compounds target victims worldwide. Let us just hope the Chinese authorities learn a lesson from the mistakes made by the FCC in the USA, and they will check if a call center is being run by human trafficking gangsters before they decide whether to apply CHAKEN signatures to their calls.
