SK Telecom blocks voice phishing via AI, police database

SK Telecom Co., a South Korean major mobile carrier, is strengthening its spam call filtering system to prevent voice phishing. The system blocked 32,271 outgoing calls suspected of voice phishing over the past year, which protected 14,385 phone users, SK Telecom said on Wednesday.

Called VSFS, the filtering system blocks scam calls by using the list of the phone numbers reported to the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency (SMPA) and Financial Security Agency (FSA) and SK Telecom’s own phone scam database.

This free service for SK Telecom users is much more efficient than other carriers' services, which warn that an incoming call could be spam or block some internet phone calls.

SK Telecom built VSFS in 2009 and started blocking the voice phishing calls in 2020. In the same year, it partnered with FSA and began preventing so-called “snatching calls.” When a phone user tries to make a call to government agencies or financial institutions, snatching calls connect the caller to financial criminals via malicious apps installed on the caller's phone. 

In April 2021, the mobile carrier cooperated with SMPA and started blocking phone calls reported to the police as scams. Using its in-house artificial intelligence system, the telecoms company also disconnects incoming calls suspected as scam and helps its users check if any malicious app is installed on their phones. SK Telecom created 7.4 billion won ($5.7 million) in social value by blocking voice phishing over the past year, the company said.

Write to Seung-Woo Lee at leeswoo@hankyung.com
Jihyun Kim edited this article.