Polish telecoms to help fight phisihng in 2022

What are phishing, smishing and spoofing?

According to Wikipedia:

1. Phishing is a type of social engineering where an attacker sends a fraudulent (e.g., spoofed, fake, or otherwise deceptive) message designed to trick a person into revealing sensitive information to the attacker or to deploy malicious software on the victim’s infrastructure like ransomware. In payment services/banking frauds phishing is usually aimed at illegally obtaining data enabling signing into e-banking platforms and/or authorizing payment transactions.
2. Smishing or SMS phishing is a type of phishing, in which cell phone text messages are used to deliver the “bait” to the attacked entity.
3. Spoofing is a situation in which a person or program (an attacker) successfully identifies as another by falsifying data, to gain an illegitimate advantage. In the context of telecoms, spoofing usually means illegally impersonating someone else’s phone number.

What are the current legal security measures held by telecom companies?

Currently, telecom companies in Poland have very limited powers in counteracting fraud. In cooperation with NASK (Naukowa i Akademicka Sieć Komputerowa) and the regulator UKE (Urząd Komunikacji Elektronicznej) telecom companies can only block access to websites identified as harmful. There are no effective measures enabling blockage of text messages or counteracting fraudulent campaigns.

What is the nature of planned changes in the telecom law in Poland?

The secretary of state for the digitization processes, while representing the official position of the Polish government, informed that the planned changes in Polish law will be presented in March 2022. Specific measures are not yet revealed, however, the market is expecting that the telecom companies will be granted with powers to automatically analyze the contents of text messages (data science similar to SPAM filters in our mailboxes).

Telecom framework – contact our lawyers

If you are in search of information about specific matters related to telecom legal framework contact our telecom lawyers in Poland.