900,000 phone numbers confirmed as ‘not genuine’

Circular 08, for the first time, allows users to proactively confirm the owner’s SIM through the VNeID application, and at the same time remove numbers that are no longer in use or strange phone numbers.

At the regular April press conference of the Ministry of Science and Technology, on the afternoon of April 29, Mr. Nguyen Anh Cuong, Deputy Director of the Department of Telecommunications, cited preliminary data from the Police Department of Administrative Management of Social Order (C06, Ministry of Public Security) showing that more than 95 million mobile subscribers have been synchronized to the system, of which 60 million “have confirmed owners”.

Meanwhile, nearly 900,000 subscribers were actively confirmed by users as “not genuine” through VNeID. “This process will continue to be implemented until June 15,” Mr. Cuong said.

The representative of the Telecommunications Department emphasized that confirming the SIM card owner is the next step after the “data cleaning” period in 2023. At that time, the management agency checked the paperwork information of hundreds of millions of mobile subscribers, thereby detecting about 17 million cases of inaccurate information. Of these, 11 million subscribers have had their information updated, while 6 million have had their services stopped.

“Compared to the previous period, the current way of doing things has changed,” Mr. Cuong explained, adding that the current focus is giving people the right to proactively check and confirm the subscription information they are using.

According to a representative of the management agency, the goal of Circular 08 is to build a “clean” and transparent subscriber database, thereby protecting user rights and contributing to the prevention of fraudulent acts and violations of law related to phone SIMs.

Circular 08, issued by the Ministry of Science and Technology on March 31, aims to tighten the management of unofficial SIMs. The circular has two notable new points: allowing users to proactively confirm the phone number they are using through the VNeID application (from April 15); and require face authentication again when changing SIM to a new device (from June 15).

The new regulations on subscriber information authentication are implemented in the context of the situation of unauthorized SIMs being identified as one of the causes leading to spam messages, spam calls and fraudulent acts.

Clarifying further, a representative of the Department of Telecommunications said that some users do not fully understand the timeline for implementing the Circular. April 15, when Circular 08 takes effect, is when telecommunications businesses will begin to be allowed to check data with C06. According to regulations, businesses have 30 days to synchronize all subscription data to the VNeID system.

Previously, to handle the situation of junk SIMs, management agencies have implemented many solutions such as the Telecommunications Law 2023 and Decree 163/2024, requiring subscriber information to match residential data, while clearly defining the responsibilities of businesses and users. Circular 08 is the next step, towards the goal of each phone number being associated with an authentic identity.