Telecommunications Federal Council wants better protection for telephone numbers and domain names
Swiss telephone numbers and Internet domains should be better protected against misuse by criminals. The Federal Council agrees with three corresponding motions from the SVP, SP and Center parliamentary groups.
13.02.2025, 12:38
SDA
Martin Candinas (Center/GR) wants to require providers to take active and technical measures against the unlawful concealment of actual telephone numbers. Calls with spoofed numbers should be recognized and prevented. This should prevent criminal acts.
Problems associated with call ID spoofing have increased to a devastating extent, writes Candinas. Fraudsters are systematically using spoofing, for example when fake police officers make calls. Or alarms are triggered with disguised numbers. This takes up resources and can cause fear among the population.
In her second motion, Priska Seiler Graf (SP/ZH) demands that domestic and foreign operators who purchase Swiss number blocks and do not comply with identification requirements should no longer be allowed to purchase numbers. They should also block numbers without correctly identified subscribers.
The identification of subscribers is often inadequate today, criticized Seiler Graf. Supposedly genuine Swiss numbers for which fake or disguised identities were used during registration were used for criminal activities.
Michael Götte (SVP/SG) wants to protect Swiss domain names (.ch and .swiss) from abuse. They should only be assigned to clearly identified natural and legal persons. And not only phishing or malware should be a prerequisite for blocking a domain, but also other cases of misuse.
In everyday life, the registration obligations are only inadequately complied with, writes Götte on the proposal. And offenders would hardly have to fear any consequences in the event of abusive registrations.
The Federal Council is proposing the adoption of all three motions. It did not publish any arguments for this in the statements published on Thursday.
