At the meeting of the Steering Committee for the development of science, technology, innovation, digital transformation and Project 06 held on September 24, Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Van Long - Deputy Minister of Public Security requested the Ministry of Science and Technology to guide ministries and branches to build a common platform and investment items for digital transformation. At the same time, it is required to complete the lockdown of mobile subscribers who have not yet identified their owners in September 2025.
Currently, the authorities have not published the latest data on mobile subscribers without owners. However, it can be imagined from a statistic of the Ministry of Information and Communications (now the Ministry of Science and Technology), published in September 2023: through checking the subscribers of people with names on 10 SIM cards, this agency discovered 8.6 million subscribers who were not their owners. After that, 3.6 million of these SIM cards had their information re-registered, the rest were locked or revoked.
In fact, in recent years, junk SIM cards or non-owner subscribers have become a favorite tool for scammers: from impersonating police, prosecutors to appropriate property, to fake bank messages, e-wallets to steal money.
The common point is that these subscribers are not associated with specific identities, making tracing extremely difficult.
Once it was impossible to identify the person behind the phone number, the authorities had difficulty investigating and handling it, and the people became reluctant victims.
Project 06 of the Government aims to build a data system "correct, complete, clean, living, unified, shared". However, if a large number of subscribers are still "unclear" about their identities, the input data will certainly be distorted.
This deviation not only makes it difficult for state management, but also directly affects the national digital transformation process.
Digital government and the digital economy cannot operate effectively on "virtual" data. If all public services and electronic transactions must be linked to personal identification, then mobile subscribers - the most popular authentication means, need to be absolutely accurate.
The consequences of letting junk SIM exist do not stop at management, but also directly affect people, when they are bothered by junk messages, junk calls, or even fall into scams. Many people have lost tens, hundreds of millions of VND just for a call from an unknown number.
Telecommunications enterprises also suffered losses when they were taken advantage of to disseminate illegal services, fraud, causing financial losses, and reducing reputation. In the long term, the existence of the junk SIM market goes against the efforts to build a transparent, safe and healthy telecommunications environment.
When some phones are involved in illegal acts but cannot track down subscribers, the litigation process can be prolonged, even leaving criminals unknown. This is a burden for the investigation agency and reduces the effectiveness of the law.
On the contrary, if all subscribers are identified as the owner, every digital trace can be traced, thereby improving the ability to prevent, deter and handle violations.
In the context of national digital transformation entering an acceleration phase, the decision of the Ministry of Public Security to lock all subscribers without identifying the owner in September not only solves immediate problems, but also lays the foundation for long-term transparency and safety to protect people and businesses and clean up the digital environment.
This is also a prerequisite for Vietnam to successfully build a safe and secure digital society - where every citizen is protected, and every data has clear and transparent legal value.
