MOTION ON “COMPREHENSIVELY REGULATING UNSOLICITED CALLS”
Deputy President, nowadays, many industries engaging in areas such as telecommunications, personal credit business and physical checks-up rely on telemarketing to drive sales. Given the absence of target audience, they have no idea about their potential customers. They simply dial a large block of telephone numbers indiscriminately in the hope that some members of the public are not averse to such calls and will answer their calls. Nevertheless, given the chance of successfully matching interested customers with their products is extremely low, many industries have no longer promoted sales by means of telemarketing. Lawbreakers have also taken advantage of the loopholes that members of the public can hardly verify the authenticity of callers’ numbers and impersonated businessmen to engage in fraudulent activities. The general public are exposed to a high risk of fraud and nuisances arising from such acts. Therefore, there is a strong public demand for enacting legislation to regulate such kind of calls. I would like to thank Mr Edward LEUNG for proposing today’s motion, which has allowed the SAR Government to ponder on ways to regulate unsolicited calls.
In order to combat unsolicited calls including fraudulent calls, the Government previously introduced a series of measures including the implementation of the Real-name Registration Programme for Subscriber Identification Module (“SIM”) Cards (“RNR Programme”) in February 2023, which has curtailed illegal acts by anonymous persons. In December 2023, the authorities introduced the SMS Sender Registration Scheme to help members of the public verify the identity of SMS senders. However, “as virtue rises one foot, vice rises ten”. Fraudsters have already identified the loopholes of all these measures. In respect of the number of fraud cases reported last year, the number of telephone deception cases had increased by 187%, showing that there were many inadequacies in the existing regime that warranted urgent improvement.
According to media reports, some lawbreakers have purchased local SIM cards with false identity documents. They have also made use of computer software to edit passport photos and portrait images embedded in Hong Kong identity cards obtained through illegal channels and affix their photos to Hong Kong identity cards under the name of other people. By doing so, they can easily register a large number of SIM cards online, which are far beyond the limit of 10 registered SIM cards for each user. Many shops in the market are selling SIM cards registered under real names and fraud syndicates can easily procure a large number of SIM cards registered under real names and use them for fraudulent purposes. I am pleased to see that the Bureau will enact legislation to regulate relevant activities this year, but we should mainly focus on curbing irregularities at source.
Telecommunications service providers have currently implemented RNR Programme and face-to-face contact is required during the registration process, whereby they will automatically capture the information of users’ identity documents by the optical character recognition technology and manually verify the information. However, I have looked up the information and found that if members of the public choose not to use “iAM Smart” for registration, they can still register through the registration systems run by telecommunications service providers. There is no unified registration system for all telecommunications service providers and the verification capabilities of some registration systems are weak, thus allowing telephone scammers to register SIM cards with forged or stolen identity data. In addition to the requirement of introducing face recognition or fingerprint verification technology, the Government should make it mandatory for Hong Kong identity card holders to conduct real-name registration through “iAM Smart” as a further step to ensure the effective implementation of RNR Programme.
In respect of assisting members of the public in verifying suspicious incoming calls, the latest upgraded version of “Scameter+” can automatically check incoming calls received by members of the public against the updated scam database. In case a potential risk is detected, an alert will be issued immediately and members of the public may choose whether or not to answer the call. To receive alerts for suspicious calls, members of the public should first change the permission setting of their mobile phones and the steps are fairly complicated for users who are not familiar with the use of mobile phones. They may have just downloaded the applications without knowing that they have to turn on relevant functions before they can receive alerts. Therefore, I suggest that in addition to stepping up anti-deception publicity campaigns, the Government should set up help desks under the Home Affairs Department and District Offices to help members of the public install and turn on relevant functions so as to reduce their exposure to the risk of fraud.
Deputy President, the regulation of unsolicited calls cannot be achieved merely from the legislative perspective. The Government must coordinate relevant departments to hold discussions with industries which heavily rely on telemarketing and telecommunications service providers in order to achieve the goals of regulating commercial telemarketing calls and significantly reducing the number of malicious, nuisance and illicit calls. We should respect the rights of recipients while facilitating the development of legitimate marketing activities in Hong Kong. We must strike a balance between the two.
Deputy President, I support Mr Edward LEUNG’s original motion and the amendment proposed by Dr Johnny NG. I so submit.