South Korea’s Korea Communications Commission (KCC) warned on the 17th that phishing text messages disguised as holiday support payments, gift-delivery notices and Chuseok events are likely to increase ahead of the holiday. The messages may ask recipients to enter home addresses, bank account numbers or other personal and financial information through embedded URLs, or persuade them to install malicious apps. Such apps can enable remote control of smartphones and allow attackers to send illegal spam without the owner’s knowledge, creating secondary damage. The KCC said legitimate notification messages rarely require unnecessary personal information or bank account numbers and urged users to verify URLs that request data or separate program installations. Suspicious messages can be checked through KakaoTalk’s Boho Nara channel. Users can also activate automatic security-risk blocking in phone settings, delete suspicious messages and block senders. The KCC and Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) asked mobile carriers and device manufacturers, including Samsung Electronics, to strengthen intelligent spam filtering. Illegal spam can be reported to KISA through the Illegal Spam Easy Report app or built-in mobile reporting features.