Newsfrom Japan
Tokyo, Dec. 1 (Jiji Press)–Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department on Monday added a new feature to its Digi Police crime prevention app that blocks incoming calls from international numbers and those believed to have been used for special fraud.
When the new feature is enabled, the app automatically blocks international calls and calls from numbers known by the MPD as having been used for fraud. Blocks for international calls will be unavailable for users of Apple Inc.’s iPhone, so the app will instead display the settings screen for a different countermeasure.
According to the MPD, fixed-line and IP phones were used for most fraud calls in 2022. International calls, or phone numbers with the “+” prefix attached to callers from outside Japan, accounted for about 70 pct of fraud calls in 2024, a share that rose to around 80 pct in the first half of this year.
About 90 pct of scam calls were made to fixed-line phones in 2023, but the proportion of targeted calls made to mobile phones grew to nearly 50 pct in the first 10 months of this year. The increase is attributed to increasingly sophisticated scamming methods, such as guiding targets to take video calls and showing them fake arrest warrants and police notebooks.
The total amount of special fraud damage in Tokyo this year has reached 23,684 million yen as of the end of October, more than 14 billion yen higher than a year earlier.
[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
