Following the NTC’s admission that contact tracing forms might be the cause for the proliferation of scam text messages–a statement that is similar to what Smart said in their press statement–the NPC has revealed in their investigation that these smishing messages “appear to have been sent using specific mobile number registered to certain texting services.”

To be specific, the NPC explained that the ones sending scam text messages have been getting their information from SMS IDs as a source. This source includes information like bank names and organization names. “Most likely, what is happening is that data scraping, either manual or automated, is getting information coming from these different applications and this is what is being used to match the names in the texts being sent to our countrymen,” Leandro Angelo Aguirre said in an interview with ABS-CBN Teleradyo.

PLDT Chief Information Security Officer Angel Redoble said that possible sources may include GCash and Viber, as both apps have details like the user’s name and their phone number–two of the needed info for perpetrators to send scam text messages to them.

We have reached out to Globe about this, and we’re told that they will issue a statement on it soon.

Despite all their investigations, for now, the NPC remains clueless about who is the real source behind all these scam text messages. Echoing Smart’s statement on the issue, the NPC said that it appears that those sending scam text messages are using prepaid SIMs that are subscribed to unlimited text messaging.

In the meantime, all telcos are doing their best efforts in detecting and blocking spammers and scammers, which include continually tweaking their SMS fraud detection tools.