The Philippines is one of the most proactive countries for tackling the import of SMS blasters, a kind of radio device that is typically used by fraudsters to send smishing messages to any mobile phone within range. However, the recent arrest of a man accused of advertising SMS blasters through social media has prompted a prominent politician to push for increased controls over their sale. Senator Mark Villar (pictured) is a former government minister who is also a member of one of the Philippines’ most powerful political families. Villar has introduced a resolution that would task a Senate Committee with drafting new legislation to control the sale of SMS blasters.
Villar’s resolution specifically refers to the use of Facebook to sell SMS blasters, which are also sometimes referred to as IMSI-catchers or false base stations (FBS).
WHEREAS, the recent arrest of Thiang Choon Wee, who is accused of leading a syndicate involved in supplying IMSI catchers, came after the discovery of his advertisement for these devices and SMS Blaster Machines (Octopus 5G) on a Facebook page titled “SMS Machine Broadcast Asia” last October 2024…
The resolution also points out that the latest SMS blasters are small enough to be carried around by a person.
WHEREAS, officials noted that the IMSI catchers retrieved from Thiang Choon Wee were compact enough to fit inside backpacks, making them easy to deploy and harder to detect…
Most arrests worldwide have related to SMS blasters transported around cities by motor vehicles, but Thai police arrested in April 2024 two scammers who used a backpack to repeatedly carry a concealed SMS blaster through some of Bangkok’s busiest malls. This came a few months after the upload of a YouTube video advert that depicted the use of an IMSI-catcher which connected itself to the phones of passing shoppers in a mall.
Per the resolution, Filipinos have lost an associated PHP460bn (USD8bn) to crimes relating to the theft of their financial information, though the resolution is not clear about how much of this is due to the use of smishing or SMS blasters.
The resolution wishes to address these crimes by proposing the…
…review [of] existing laws, the sufficiency of regulations on rogue technologies, and enhancement of law enforcement’s ability to detect and monitor these illicit activities devices…
Commsrisk has repeatedly drawn attention to adverts on social media for radio communications equipment typically used by criminals. There are some limited legitimate uses for radio equipment of this type, but it is absurd to pretend that shady businesses are using YouTube and Facebook in the hopes of selling to law enforcement agencies and other emergency services.
Instead of responding respectfully to the public safety issues raised by this reporting, it appears that social media companies simply tear down any example highlighted by Commsrisk, whilst failing to make any effort to identify numerous other adverts that are just as bad. For example, I typed ‘SMS blaster’ into Facebook before writing this article, and the top search result was this 2019 SMS blaster advert, also pictured below in case it is taken down by Facebook after this article is published. The phone number of the vendor in this advert begins +63, the country code for the Philippines.
The full text of Mark Villar’s resolution, Philippine Senate Resolution 1294, can be found here.
