La Jornada: The CRT will seek to prevent WhatsApp from being used in extortion

The objective of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (CRT) of avoiding telephone extortion by ordering the blocking of those cell phone lines that are not linked to the Unique Population Registration Code (CURP) before the next 30th will not be fully met, since when connecting to Wi-Fi, applications such as Whatsapp or Telegram will continue to work.

The organization informed this newspaper that it is working to close this gap. “In the area of ​​regulatory actions, in addition to the linking of telephone lines, the CRT is working with application providers (such as Whatsapp) to combat the phenomenon (of extortion) when it is carried out through instant messaging accounts,” he noted.

No extension is currently being considered to register cell phones, he said. As of July 1, users who have not made this link on the electronic sites of Telcel, AT&T, Movistar and Altán Redes (in the case of Bait and other operators) or in their branches, will have their line, their mobile data and the SMS service – text messages – blocked, even if the companies continue to charge the postpaid service on bank cards and even if the prepaid purchase is still open for cell phones that work in that modality.

“Balance or credit loading operations on prepaid lines may continue to be carried out, even when the line is suspended for not having been linked within the deadline,” said the CRT, headed by President Commissioner Norma Lozano.

In the case of postpaid, the CRT stated: “the contractual obligations assumed with the operators will remain in force, even when the line is temporarily disabled for not having been linked within the deadline, since it is the responsibility of the user to carry out the linking process.”

The only services that will be available on those lines that are not registered are the seismic alert, 911, 079, 088 and 089 and calls to the companies that provide the service. However, the lines may be reactivated if they register later, although with the probability of waiting in line and encountering a saturation process.

According to the organization, as of June 16 there were 60 million 632 thousand 507 registered lines, out of a universe of 144 million, which means that on that date there were about 83.4 million missing from completing the process.

The devices’ Internet access via Wi-Fi will not be affected by not linking the telephone line, so the applications can continue to be used. However, both mobile data and SMS, which are used to validate banking operations and recover passwords for different applications, will be blocked.