Telcos should compensate phished subscribers, suggests Singapore

Singapore's government has proposed making telcos compensate their customers if they're phished via text messages that should have been blocked. The idea of making carriers culpable for crime emerged yesterday in a consultation paper prepared by Singapore's Monetary Authority and Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). …

[Missing Semicolon]

yes!

We need this here, too.

[theailer]

Re: yes!

We need it everywhere, man ;) and now

[Pascal Monett]

"letting scam texts through is a culpable act"

I'm starting to really like what Singapore is doing for the Internet and communications in general.

[Herring`]

Interesting

I am hearing a lot recently about people being scammed by ads on Facebook. The idea of making Meta liable for something is intriguing. Their response is that their terms of service prohibit fraudulent activity but that doesn't seem to bother criminals that much.

[damienblackburn]

Re: Interesting

Here in the US, liability on them could only be asserted if they knowingly hosted bad actors, such as getting reports and not acting on them. Which could mean a lot for their (and others) automated reporting system.

[Tron]

On the other hand...

No filter is perfect and coughing up cash because your users have an unwise addiction to get rich quick schemes is unfair. So maybe telcos should suggest that permitting any texts to, from or within Singapore is too great a risk, and drop the service there. If tech companies are liable for what their users do with their services, many services, including all the free ones, would vanish or would have to be closely monitored by a state-aligned censor. It opens the door to universal state surveillance. So no surprise that Singapore are trying to leverage it. Ironically, I'm posting this comment on the day the UK government are leveraging state control and surveillance of social media. We need to return to tech services as conduits. Failing that, we need distributed alternatives real soon.