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<p>The Criminal Justice Bill will introduce a new offence of supplying or possessing
“SIM farm” devices, which allow criminals to send scam texts to thousands of people
at the same time, without good reason or undertaking adequate due diligence.</p><p>In
addition, the Government and Industry have signed the Telecommunications Fraud Sector
Charter, a voluntary agreement to improve counter-fraud efforts. Under the Telecommunications
Charter, the sector has introduced firewalls that detect and stop scam texts from
reaching customers. The firewalls have stopped 960million scam text messages since
January 2022.</p><p>Furthermore, domain registrars, Internet infrastructure (IIPs)
and service providers (ISPs) operate robust voluntary arrangements for filtering,
blocking and takedown of malicious websites, which is supported by the operational
work of our agencies and law enforcement. NCSC also works in collaboration with industry
partners to present ISPs with real-time threat data that enables them to instantly
block access to known fraudulent or malicious websites. This has a major impact in
protecting citizens from cyber- and cyber-facilitated crimes.</p><p>Where voluntary
arrangements prove unsuccessful, we are introducing a new legislative power will provide
law enforcement and investigative agencies with a formal process to suspend IP addresses
and domain names that are being used to facilitate serious crime. This power will
also be introduced as part of the Criminal Justice Bill.</p>
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