Employees at telecommunications companies have had access to read customers' text messages for months through a filter that was supposed to protect citizens against scam messages. This is reported by the trade magazine Ingeniøren, which can report that employees at Telenor, 3, TDC and Norlys have had the opportunity to see the content of thousands of ordinary text messages.
- All telecommunications companies have had the opinion that the system could do more on its own than it has proven to be able to, says Director of Teleindustrien Jakob Willer to the media.
The filter has otherwise been praised by the government and the telecommunications industry for being an effective protection against scam messages, where, for example, the names of several energy companies are used for fraud.
The system works by algorithms and artificial intelligence analyzing all the text messages that are sent to citizens' phones. They are checked for fraud. For example, the algorithm will catch if an SMS is sent to many thousands of citizens at once and contains harmful links.
Has turned down the filter
But "around July" the telecommunications companies stopped using the most intrusive parts of the filter, so today it is "not very effective", says the director of the industry association.
The SMS filter was presented as a means of combating the increasing SMS fraud in November 2024, with the support of both the government, the telecommunications industry and the Danish Consumer Council Think. It requires a court order to access private communications. Therefore, it took time to ensure that the filter did not violate the constitutionally guaranteed confidentiality of correspondence or the EU's directives on privacy.
- They will not be able to read people's messages, said Minister of Industry Morten Bødskov (S) to Politiken at the time.
The SMS filter is inspired by Finland, where in periods it has been possible to eliminate up to 95 percent of attempted fraud via SMS and telephone. According to the telecommunications industry, the solution will neither store nor log data. It is only ordinary SMS that the telecommunications companies can screen - not encrypted ones.
Minister of Digitalization Caroline Stage (M) refuses to be interviewed by Ingeniøren and refers to the fact that the Danish Agency for Digitalization is currently assessing the SMS filter. She will then discuss it with the parties in the Danish Parliament.
A 41-year-old man from Frederiksberg was sentenced to six years in prison in August for data fraud and attempted data fraud totaling 23.5 million kroner. He and other perpetrators sent 2.4 million text messages over four months in 2024.
/ritzau/
Text, graphics, images, sound, and other content on this website are protected under copyright law. DK Medier reserves all rights to the content, including the right to exploit the content for the purpose of text and data mining, cf. Section 11b of the Copyright Act and Article 4 of the DSM Directive.
Customers with IP agreements/major customer agreements may only share Danish Offshore Industry articles internally for the purpose of handling specific cases. Sharing in connection with specific cases refers to journaling, archiving, or similar uses.
Customers with a personal subscription/login may not share Danish Offshore Industry articles with individuals who do not themselves have a personal subscription to Danish Offshore Industry.
Any deviation from the above requires written consent from DK Medier.
