MANILA – An official of the Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) on Wednesday called on social media platforms and other online service providers to use artificial intelligence (AI) to combat cybercrimes such as scams.
During the ‘Kapihan sa Manila Bay’ forum at the Cafe Adriatico in Manila, CICC Executive Director, Undersecretary Alexander Ramos said most scams, once identified and banned, will create a new profile but with almost, if not outright similar, content.
“They will later re-emerge under a different name but the content is the same. So, a simple AI instruction there regarding similarity should disallow it. They should perform profiling,” Ramos said.
He said platforms such as YouTube and Meta’s Facebook and Marketplace should flag the IP address and the identity of persons previously found to have committed fraud.
“Forever flagged yan kasi scam yan. Identified na (They should be forever flagged because that’s a scam. They have identified the) IP, the person, the images--they have full control of that, the content,” he said.
He said Republic Act (RA) 11967, known as the Internet Transactions Act of 2023, enables the CICC and other government agencies to seek action against social media and e-commerce platforms for failing to address such issues.
“With our new law with online consumption, they can be penalized correctly. Nag-usap na kami ng DTI, kino-compile lang namin yung mga kakulangan nila, sistema nila (We have spoken with the Department of Trade and Industry, we’re just compiling their shortcomings, their systems), they should fix it or they will face penalties based on our new law,” he said.
These penalties can range from fines to temporary suspension of operations.
He called on the public to help fight fraudsters and other cybercriminals by reporting SMS, e-mail, or other forms of scams to hotline 1326.
“Somebody will pick it up, talk to you, we gave instructions na wag pahirapan ang nagre-report (to not make it hard on those making the report). Just get the affected mobile number or email running a scam,” he said.
The Inter-Agency Response Center (I-ARC) 1326 hotline can be reached by voice call through landline or mobile. (PNA)
