The National Communications Commission told Taiwan’s three major mobile operators to submit commercial SMS link whitelists for spot audits this week after the 165 anti-fraud hotline logged a post-holiday jump in complaints about parcel-fee texts that still reached inboxes. Regulators want proof that carriers are blocking unregistered URLs required under the Fraud Hazard Prevention Act.
How whitelisting is supposed to work
Businesses must pre-register domains and phone numbers with carriers before sending marketing or logistics texts that include clickable links. Messages outside the registry should be dropped at the gateway. MODA and the Criminal Investigation Bureau said fraud rings rotated fresh shorteners during the Mid-Autumn peak, exploiting lag between scam domain registration and carrier block updates.
NCC Secretary-General Huang Wen-che’s team is comparing carrier logs with police takedown lists filed since September 15, checking whether blocks propagated within the 24-hour window operators promised.
Carrier responses
Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan Mobile, and Far EasTone said they added keyword filters for phrases like “storage fee” and “points expiring” in Romanized and Chinese variants. They cautioned that over-blocking could delay legitimate courier notices, so human review queues grew over the holiday.
Consumer guidance unchanged
Official advice still favors opening courier apps directly and reporting suspicious texts to 165. The NCC audit does not replace bank dispute processes outlined by the Financial Supervisory Commission, but it attacks the delivery channel before phishing sites load.
Political timing
Legislators returning Monday for the new session asked whether penalties should rise for carriers that miss block deadlines. The NCC said it will publish aggregated audit results in October without naming individual scam domains, to avoid giving copycats a tested list.
Why it matters
Taiwan’s scam fight increasingly sits at the SMS gateway, not only in courtroom prosecutions. A clean whitelist audit would show infrastructure rules can keep pace with holiday fraud spikes; failures would fuel opposition bills to mandate sender authentication on every commercial text.
Consumer groups asked the NCC to publish carrier block rates weekly, not only after audits conclude, so subscribers can see whether whitelist rules are narrowing the smishing window.