MANILA, Philippines– The Department of Information and Communications Technology reiterated that the registration for SIM cards currently in use will no longer be extended after the July 25 deadline, despite calls from groups that people in far-flung areas struggle to comply with documentation requirements.

After the deadline, all unregistered SIM cards will permanently lose access to all telecommunication and social media access. For those who will buy a new SIM, they will still need to provide identification documents before they could activate it.

The deadline was earlier extended by 90 days from April 25 after millions of users failed to do so. The law allows for an extension of up to 120 days.

As of July 19, over 104 million SIM cards have been registered, just 61.9% of the 168 million number of subscribers.

Telco officials earlier said that they do not expect all SIMs to be registered as some may be dormant accounts or used for scams. SIM registration aims to eliminate scams, but harvesting personal information at scale have led security experts to raise concerns.

“[President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s] priorities are misplaced. If he is genuine in his quest to protect the people from scams and other cybercrimes, he will not enact this SIM registration that not only fails to address the roots of scams but also endangers our data privacy,” said Junk SIM Registration Network.

Users can register through the following sites:

• Globe
• Smart
• Dito

–Rappler.com