September 1, 2025 Request for Strengthening Countermeasures Against Phishing Emails

　Today, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) issued a written request to telecommunications carriers through their industry associations to strengthen their countermeasures against phishing emails.

Note: The published materials are in Japanese only.

　To counter phishing emails, the Japanese government is advocating the further promotion of domain authentication technologies, such as DMARC, as part of its initiatives to prevent damage caused by fraudulent emails and SMS. This initiative is included in the Comprehensive Measures to Protect People from Frauds 2.0, which was adopted at the Ministerial Meeting Concerning Measures against Crime on April 22, 2025.
　Recently, the number of unauthorized accesses and transactions by third parties has been sharply increasing in online transaction services. These incidents are carried out using customer information—such as login IDs, passwords—stolen through phishing emails disguised as legitimate securities companies.
　Telecommunications carriers are promoting various measures to prevent phishing, including the introduction of source domain authentication technology. However, with the advent of generative AI, it has become possible for anyone to produce large volumes of natural Japanese text, facilitating the distribution of more sophisticated phishing emails than ever before. Under these circumstances, strengthening countermeasures against phishing emails is imperative. Today, the MIC, through telecommunications industry associations, requested that telecommunications carriers further enhance their countermeasures against phishing emails.