The government has approved a measure allowing companies to use one-way assistance numbers to combat phone identity theft and fraud, also known as “spoofing,” ministers Vanessa Matz and Rob Beenders announced on Saturday.
Spoofing targets service-based industries such as banks, insurance companies, and energy providers, with fraudsters impersonating these organisations by using their phone numbers to obtain confidential information from unsuspecting individuals.
Minister Matz highlighted the urgency of tackling this issue, stating, “We are witnessing too many dramatic situations where people lose considerable sums of money to increasingly ingenious scammers.”
Under the new measure, companies can implement assistance numbers that only function for incoming calls, meaning only customers can contact the service. Numbers beginning with 070, 078, and 0800 already operate this way, as these prefixes cannot be used to place outgoing calls.
Businesses most vulnerable to spoofing will be able to register their numbers on a “do-not-originate” list managed by the IBPT, Belgium’s federal telecommunications regulator. Calls made by fraudsters using these protected numbers will be blocked by telecom operators.
Additionally, Minister Matz plans to introduce measures to enhance data exchange between banks and telecommunications providers, aiming to improve early detection of fraudulent activity.
