House seeks own probe on phishing scam that affected teachers
PARTY-LIST representatives filed a resolution late Wednesday seeking a House panel probe on the alleged phishing scam that victimized public school teachers with payroll accounts at state-owned Landbank of the Philippines (LANDBANK).
A similar inquiry has also been proposed in the Senate while the National Bureau of Investigation and LANDBANK are already conducting their respective investigations.
House Resolution 2484 calls on the House Committee on Basic Education and Culture to look into teachers’ payroll accounts that were illegally accessed through a phishing scam.
Phishing is when an attacker pretends to be a trusted company and contacts a target through email, telephone or texting, and tricks them into giving their private information like bank account details.
LANDBANK has said that their systems were not compromised and the individual accounts of the teachers were hacked by phishing.
The resolution was introduced by ACT Teachers Rep. France L. Castro and members of Bayan Muna, Gabriela, and Kabataan party-list groups.
Meanwhile, a teachers’ group welcomed the recent partnership forged by the Bankers Association of the Philippines (BAP) and the Department of Justice (DoJ) to establish response mechanisms for cybercrimes that affect consumers and lenders.
“We welcome the initiative by the DoJ and BAP, it would have been nice if we were invited to observe the discussion,” Benjo Basas, head of the non-profit organization Teacher’s Dignity Coalition, told BusinessWorld in a call on Thursday.
“This is a step in the right direction, but the responsibility still rests on the banking institution, which is LANDBANK,” he added. — Jaspearl Emerald G. Tan and John Victor D. Ordoñez
