The Royal Police Malaysia (PDRM), in collaboration with Whoscall, powered by Gogolook, has reduced the pick up rate of scam calls amongst Malaysians by 10% within 8 months.
This collaboration between Whoscall and PDRM has been ongoing since January 2023 and it involves fraud number database sharing from PDRM Commercial Crime Investigation Department (CCID) portal to Whoscall data system.
Whoscall detected 3.1 million fraudulent calls and SMS in Malaysia as of August this year, where 318,147 of the fraud numbers detected were from PDRM CCID portal which was imported to Whoscall’s database.
CCID chief assistant director ACP Azman Mohd Isa said PDRM is pleased to see the positive results from the collaboration with Whoscall.
“This partnership with Whoscall is a key element in PDRM’s ongoing anti-scam campaign which offers an actionable step to protect against scammers by leveraging the app call identification technology.
“We are pleased to know that the app is still developing and introducing new features in order to keep up with the constantly-changing strategies of scammers and we look forward to continuing this collaboration for more scam prevention projects,” Azman said today (Oct 18) in a statement.
Gogolook chief operating officer Manwoo Joo said with the shared database from PDRM, they were able to add the PDRM tagging on unknown calls that reached the call receivers under ‘scammer (verified by PDRM)’.
“This method proved to be very successful in deterring Malaysians from picking up the scam calls. Data collected showed that the user pick up rate of scam calls dropped from 21% to 11% within 8 months.
“We are extremely pleased with the results and will remain committed to supporting PDRM in protecting Malaysians against scammers and frauds through our AI technology and proprietary database of over 1.6 billion phone number entries,” he said.
Whoscall app has been specifically designed and developed to act as the first line of defense that updates fraud numbers to help users avoid scam calls.
“With the database sharing between PDRM CCID portal and Whoscall number data system, we ensure Malaysian users get the most updated fraud number database by simply installing the Whoscall application on their mobile phones,” added Joo.
Joo added that Whoscall has recently launched a new feature, the Whatsapp unknown call identification which is free for all Whoscall users.
“This new feature works to protect users from potential scam and fraudulent calls conducted via Whatsapp. This feature is a welcome addition to the URL Scanner feature which was introduced in May this year.
“The ‘URL Scanner’ helps users ensure a link’s safety quickly and conveniently, thereby protecting users from clicking on phishing links by mistake,” he said.
Whoscall was previously endorsed by the Selangor State Government and is the first and only caller ID application endorsed by PDRM with acknowledgement and recognition for the personal data protection system in the application.
With the free app, users are able to search phone numbers from unsolicited messages and calls against Whoscall’s database and reveal unknown caller IDs. Its URL Scanner feature help in detecting fraudulent websites and voice calls via Whatsapp.
The app has over 100 million download caller ID application with the largest database in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Its developer Gogolook, who has been in the global digital fraud prevention industry for over 10 years.
