The National Communications Commission (NCC) on Wednesday passed draft measures requiring telecoms and telecom service retailers to observe the “know your customer” principle when handling applications.
The measures were an upgrade from a set of guidelines issued last year to curb rising telephone fraud committed through local mobile phone numbers, the NCC said.
Based on the draft measures, mobile network operators would be required to verify the identities of corporate customers before assigning numbers by having a list of corporate account users, asking each user to present two identification documents and the purpose of using the numbers, verifying office locations and signing users’ affidavits, the commission said.
Photo: Taipei Times
Telecoms can dispatch personnel to visit their corporate customers to verify the information provided, it said.
Telecoms would be given one year after the measures take effect to correct any erroneous or incomplete information of their corporate customers, it said.
The “know your customer” principle applies to telecoms and retailers selling their services in stores or online, the commission said.
E-commerce operators are asked to jointly deter fraud by asking sellers on their platforms to prove they are certified telecom retailers. Service information they post should include their identity and a service agreement.
Telecoms should ask online platform operators to take down a telecom service or restrict view to it if the service information is false, according to the draft measures.
Meanwhile, NCC Vice Chairman and spokesman Wong Po-tsung (翁柏宗) said the draft regulations on the prevention and control of fraud proposed by the Ministry of the Interior would curb fraud committed through international roaming prepaid cards.
The problem was exposed after 25 Telecom (二五電訊) was found to have illegally sold international roaming prepaid cards, some of which were implicated in a fraud investigation conducted by the Yunlin Prosecutors’ Office.
“If you are in Taiwan, you should be using a local phone number rather than an international prepaid card,” Wong said.
“We will first announce a list of high-risk overseas telecom operators whose numbers are frequently related to fraud cases. The draft act, once passed, would allow us to work with the National Immigration Agency to check the arrival and departure database to see if people using high-risk international prepaid cards are in Taiwan or other countries,” he added.
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