imo boosts security layer with new anti-fraud system

In today’s digital world, users are facing increasing cyber risks. Taking serious consideration of this rising industrial challenge, to protect its valued users, popular instant communication platform imo has come up with a series of new features to enhance its security protection system, including a comprehensive anti-fraud security mechanism.

“We regard security as our highest priority, and imo is committed to fighting any misuse of the platform with all means possible,” said Christopher Hsu, Vice President of imo.

“While it is a continual battle with increasingly tech-savvy criminals, we are determined to keep strengthening our investment in this area and help solve this long-term challenge together with our industry peers and relevant authorities.”

The new anti-fraud security system primarily provides a Security Reminder every time an imo user receives a verification code.

The reminder targets to prevent the users from sharing the codes with anyone else.

The new system also disables URL previews and links shared by random users who are not connected as mutual friends.

A security reminder will also be displayed on the chat page to warn users about such one-way friends who are not in their contact list, so the user may remain cautious and does not share any personal information.

Moreover, to prevent hacking, imo will now provide a security reminder to users when there is an attempt to log in to their accounts on multiple devices and clearly notify users to NOT share theiryour verification code with anybody else.

The security notice will have details of the login attempt, including the new device information, so users can immediately visit the ‘Manage Devices’ page and delete any attached device that looks suspicious.

Newly added devices will also now be restricted from changing numbers associated with user accounts or deleting accounts.

The platform has also ramped up efforts in combating objectionable content that violates its policies and has further expanded its content moderation team.

It has added more than 130 local Bangladeshi staff in the first half of 2021 to its already big content moderation team consisting of over 3,000 employees.

The team is working relentlessly around the clock to remove any objectionable content and can guarantee that any reported content can processed within 60 seconds on average.

“Ensuring content compliance is among our top priorities. We developed strict community policies and guidelines in full compliance with local laws and cultures to fight against objectionable content. Just this half year, we have removed a total of 51 million objectionable posts and 800,000 accounts. Among them, a total of 35 million public content were removed before they were viewed,” said Christopher.

The company also strongly encourages users to report any prohibited content and behaviors that they see on the app. It has launched an awareness campaign recently in Bangladesh to advocate responsible use of social media.

“While we have built a 24*7 multi-step content moderation process supported by AI to identify and moderate any inappropriate content, our system can only detect public content automatically. For private chats, our team can only rely on user reports to stop the misbehavior as all private chats are encrypted. That’s whywe launched this campaign to strongly encourage our users to report any misbehavior they see on the platform so we can take prompt actions.”

Previously, imo introduced, the ‘Secret Chat’ feature, which the users have largely appreciated. imo also incorporated the phone number verification mechanism to enhance account security and user privacy. As a successful outcome, imo has seen a radical decrease in the harassment reports since implementing such major steps against all unsolicited actions.

“imo will continue to devote significant resources and technologies to keep our community safe and healthy. Our objective has always been and remains to become the best instant messaging platform for our Bangladeshi users,” Christopher emphasized.