The Digital Economy and Society Ministry has introduced a draft bill aimed at better protecting people from online scammers.
It would allow mobile phone service providers and banks to be held accountable for negligence by allowing their clients to be cheated, tighten controls on the sending of short messages with links attached and further limit the ownership of telephone SIM cards.
According to DES Minister Prasert Chantararuangthong, the draft seeks to amend the Cyber Crime Decree and is now being scrutinised by the Council of State.
The draft bill also seeks to increase the penalties for those who sell the personal information of their clients without their consent, from one-year in prison to five years.
It will also require mobile phone service providers to keep a close watch on callers who make more than 100 calls a day from the same phone numbers and to restrict the ownership of SIM cards to only five per person.
Senders of short messages with links attached will also be required to register with service providers, to prevent scammers from cheating people with fake messages.
According to the DES Ministry, more than 739,000 complaints of online fraud were filed with the police between March 1st and the end of November this year, with the amount of losses estimated at over 77 billion baht. Only about 8.6 billion baht, held in 450,412 “mule” bank accounts, have been impounded to date.
Most of the complaints concern online sales cheating, employment fraud, telephone blackmail, loan cheats and free gift frauds.
