GCash improves user data protection, hides some letters in the recipient's name

To ramp up its user data protection, GCash today rolled out the username anonymity feature when sending money.

New GCash sample transaction

GCash now hides some letters in the recipient's name

This added layer of customer protection will anonymize the names of users in the send money service. To recall, the name of the person is seen as an added measure of convenience and helps verify that the recipient is correct.

The country's leading e-wallet also started to migrate transaction confirmations from text messages to the app inbox in a bid to improve security and provide customers with easier access to their transaction history.

This move was made to underscore its strong commitment to protecting the accounts and personal information of its customers as it places utmost priority on helping address scam text messages that bear the full names of mobile phone users.

GCash also noted that there is no breach of data of its over 66 million users.

We have been working closely with the National Privacy Commission on the issue of text scams with names. We wish to assure our customers that our systems and infrastructure remain secure and there is no incidence of any data leak or breach,” shared Mark Frogoso, Chief Information Security Officer of GCash. Protecting the personal information of our customers remains a top priority which we believe is integral to our vision of achieving Finance for All.

We need to strike a balance between customer experience and strengthening measures to keep user information safe from unscrupulous individuals. The feature that shows the full names of recipients was intended to help users verify if they are sending to the right person and avoid being scammed, Frogoso said.

This is also one of the many measures that the company is doing to combat scams and spam messages.

Apart from this, GCash has been getting strong support from its parent company, Globe Telecom, which has spent USD 20 million (around PHP 1.1 billion) to boost its capabilities in detecting and blocking scams and spam messages.

The company claimed that under its 24/7 efforts, Globe blocked 784 million scams and spam messages from January to July this year, deactivated 14,058 scam-linked SIMs, and blacklisted 8,973 others. Globe also blocked 610 domains or uniform resource locators (URL).

The company also employed security measures including cyber threat detection and analytics, vulnerability scanning, as well as incident response, and forensics.

Using those tools, the company has been able to detect and take down phishing sites and malicious social media sites that impersonate GCash, with 900 phishing sites and 400,000 social media accounts already taken down.

GCash is also in close cooperation and collaboration with concerned government agencies to provide any information they need to prevent the further proliferation of these spam messages.

To report scams and fraudulent activities, visit the official GCash Help Center at https://help.gcash.com/hc/en-us or message Gigi on the website and type, "I want to report a scam."

GCash said that it will NEVER send users personal messages to address concerns or get personal information, especially the MPIN and One-time Pin (OTP). Customers can also reach out to the official GCash hotline at 2882 for queries and other concerns