CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY (PIA)--The Philippine Postal Corporation (PhilPost) warns the general public on the recent spike in "vishing" activities of scammers posing themselves as representatives of the agency using landlines, text messages, and emails as part of their extortion or scamming activities dubbed "Mr. Vishing."

Vishing is a form of criminal racket that uses telephone lines to call would-be victims in order to extract personal information and generate fear of fabricated illegal acts or issues that will eventually lead to extortion. These scammers can make their calls appear to come from reputable institutions or government agencies.

Based on the information that the agency received, the modus operandi started in November 2022 in which "Mr. Vishing" will be asking the would-be victims for their personal information through text or online messaging. The callers would then inform the targets that they "had discovered an outbound mail or parcel containing illegal substances purportedly sent by the prospective victim through the postal service" that was allegedly "shipped and intercepted at Cebu Central Post Office" or any post office.

"Mr. Vishing" would then refer the victim to "local police," who would use their social engineering skills to instill fear in the victims and keep them from getting into "legal entanglements."The victims are then duped or coerced (even by video calls) into shelling out vast amounts of money for protection to avoid trial and possible imprisonment.

The agency recorded that there were already three private individuals who visited their Cebu Post Office to make an inquiry about the dubious phone calls. All of them were then referred to the local police stations as these were proven to be spoofed or cloned calls with the intent of extortion.

The public is advised that their customer service hotline (02) 8288 7678 is only used for inbound calls from the mailing public tracing the whereabouts of their mail or parcels and is never used for outgoing or outbound calls for verification on senders or addressees of postal matters.

The public is also reminded not to disclose any personal information over the phone to avoid falling prey to "Mr. Vishing" and to check the authenticity of the calls, emails, or texts they receive to prevent vishing, phishing, and other frauds.

The Post Office has already referred the matter for investigation to the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) and the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC). Further, the postal service is coordinating and seeking assistance from the Philippine National Police (PNP) and telephone/cellular providers to resolve and address the PHLPost package scam. (PhilPost/PIA-10)