Junk SIMs should be thrown in the trash.

People come to standardize mobile subscriber information at ViettelStore supermarket at 102 Dien Bien Phu (Hai Duong city)

There are many junk SIMs

Currently, some small SIM and card stores in Hai Duong City still sell many SIM cards that have been registered with personal information and activated for prepaid mobile services (commonly known as junk SIMs).

At a store that sells SIM cards on Tran Hung Dao Street (Hai Duong City), as soon as I asked to buy a pre-activated SIM card, the store owner immediately held out a handful of SIM cards from many networks for me to choose from. "Yesterday, I just sold 4 pre-activated SIM cards to customers. Rest assured that all SIM cards can make and receive calls, the price is only over 100,000 VND", the store owner said. Then this man eagerly tried to install an activated iTel SIM card, priced at 135,000 VND/card, to make a call, but received a notification that the subscription was locked in one direction, and he could not top up. The store owner continued to try installing a MobiFone SIM card, topped up with 20,000 VND, and was able to make and receive calls immediately, checked his account and had 13,562 VND, and the expiration date was August 8, 2023.

Junk SIMs are mainly "held" in large quantities by dealers in advance, so there is a lot of inventory so they have to post them on social networks to sell. On some fanpages selling beautiful SIM numbers, selling SIMs, and liquidating SIMs with owners' addresses on Nguyen Thi Due and Nguyen Luong Bang streets (Hai Duong city) such as "Thanh Binh SIM Agent", "Thanh Binh SIM Warehouse" posted many posts with a very long list of SIMs, with all the prefixes of network operators, priced from 1 million to several million, even tens of millions of VND. However, many of these SIMs may have been locked, so the number of transactions is not much. Recently, independent dealers mainly sell SIMs online, so the stores are almost always closed.

A SIM card store on Nguyen Thi Due Street (Hai Duong City) is often closed, mainly selling online.

According to the reporter's investigation at some stores and authorized points of sale of network operators, there is no situation of selling pre-activated SIM cards. According to the data compiled from the three major network operators in Hai Duong including Viettel, VinaPhone, MobiFone, the whole province has more than 6,500 mobile subscribers who have been locked in both directions since April 16 due to unstandardized information. Up to now, very few owners of these locked in both directions have come to the network operators' transaction points to standardize information.

According to many mobile phone users, standardizing subscriber information and blocking unstandardized SIM cards has limited spam messages, spam calls, or calls with signs of fraud. "Last year, I was once scammed by a call claiming that I owed nearly 2 million VND in mobile phone bills. Because I was vigilant, I was not scammed. However, recently I have not received such scam calls," said Nguyen Van Hung, a native of Quang Ninh who is living and working in Hai Duong City.

Need a synchronized solution

Why do junk SIMs still exist and are still being sold online? That is due to the regulations in Decree 49 of the Government allowing an individual to register under the name of 3 different SIMs with the same network operator, from the fourth SIM onwards, the individual must sign a contract with the telecommunications enterprise. This has caused many agents and retail stores to take advantage of using the correct information of an individual to register hundreds of SIMs. These SIMs are used for bad purposes such as harassing calls and fraud.

Fanpage specializing in selling beautiful SIM numbers and liquidating registered SIMs

To overcome this situation, Mr. Tran Quoc Khanh, Deputy Director of VNPT Hai Duong Business Center, said that there must be a synchronous solution and the participation of relevant authorities. The standardization of subscriber information must match the information in the National Population Database and the Citizen Identification Database. Individuals who register for mobile subscriptions using their ID cards need to update their citizen identification numbers to register and activate their electronic identification accounts. At that time, people can use online public services or non-telecommunications services such as banking, insurance, etc. with only one main phone number. This will limit the use of multiple SIM cards by one person.

Mr. Khanh recommends that when detecting spam calls or calls with signs of fraud, people should immediately report to the 156 switchboard (the switchboard that handles messages, spam calls, and calls with signs of fraud) via two forms: voice and text. This is a unified number used nationwide and deployed with all network operators providing fixed and mobile telecommunications services.

Since last April, the Ministry of Information and Communications and the Department of Information and Communications have established many inspection teams to manage mobile subscriber information, in order to prevent spam SIMs, spam calls, and spam messages.

On the afternoon of May 9, the Department of Information and Communications of Hai Duong announced its decision to inspect the management of mobile subscriber information at the Business Center of VNPT Hai Duong, Viettel Hai Duong and MobiFone Hai Duong. Accordingly, the group subject to inspection and examination includes enterprises, organizations and individuals who register to use SIM cards in large numbers and show signs of irregularities, along with telecommunications service points directly or authorized by network operators. Telecommunications enterprises must make a list of individuals who register to use 20 SIM cards or more, and enterprises and organizations that register 50 SIM cards or more. The inspection also focuses on developing new subscribers to standardize information according to regulations... This is the next activity of the Department of Information and Communications to prevent spam SIM cards.

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