NTT Com detects more than 90 fake IDs

May 5, 2018

Tokyo- Japanese discount smartphone service provider NTT Communications Corp., in cooperation with Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department, has detected more than 90 fake identifications presented by applicants for service contracts, Jiji Press has learned.

The affiliate of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. and the MPD have been working together since November last year, in response to a rapid increase in the number of so-called "it's me" fraud and other special fraud cases using discount smartphones.

The MPD is considering starting similar cooperation with other smartphone carriers, informed sources said.

In January-March this year, the number of special fraud cases using discount smartphones in the Japanese capital came to 152, nearly double the year-before level of 83, according to the MPD.

The growing use of discount smartphones in the crime is traced to difficulties detecting fake IDs, because ID checks in the process of screening applications for service contracts for such phones are made using the applicants' face photos sent online, not in person over the counter.

Discount smartphone operators examine whether IDs submitted by applicants are true or fake, partly based on check items provided by police.

"There are a considerable number of very suspicious cases of forgery even if IDs sent by applicants don't match any of the check items," an NTT Communications official says.

The company has created a system in which it makes inquiries to the MPD for cases that are difficult to judge and the police department then asks the issuers of IDs in question for confirmation about whether they are authentic or fake.

From November 2017 to the end of last month, the MPD received 30 to 40 inquiries from NTT Communications a month, and more than 90 IDs were found to have been forged, sources said.

Handsets of NTT Communications accounted for nearly 50 percent of all discount smartphones used in special fraud in Tokyo in the first three months of 2017. But the proportion fell sharply, to 27 percent, in the same period of this year.

"We've continued analyzing characteristics of fake IDs," an NTT Communications official said, adding, "The collaboration system with the MPD has helped improve our fake ID detection rate by more than 30 percent." Jiji Press