Korea Credit Information Services is considering about creating a whitelist of e-mail accounts to verify members of credit and insurance inquiry services as few minor FinTech and Insurtech companies recently attempted to join illegally through one-time e-mails.
According to relevant industries, number of attempts to join Korea Credit Information Services’ credit and insurance inquiry service membership system illegally through one-time e-mails has been on rise recently.
“Usually about 4,000 people become members of our credit and insurance inquiry service and about 400 people are attempting to become members illegally through one-time e-mails.” said a representative for Korea Credit Information Services.
Previously, Korea Credit Information Services changed its credit and insurance inquiry service, which were available freely through a non-membership system, to a membership system because it wanted to improve protection over consumers as financial companies and FinTech and Insurtech companies had recklessly scrapped personal information. As a result, one needs to become a member through an e-mail authentication and go through a text authentication once a year to use Korea Credit Information Services’ services such as ‘Credit4U’.
However, as authentication process becomes inconvenient, some companies are trying to join through one-time e-mails. Just like the way before, they request a text authentication to their consumers and they join by creating e-mails as if they create e-mails for authentication purpose. This issue cannot be prevented easily through technical measures since accounts that are created through this way cannot be prevented if they follow regulations.

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“There is no way to block accounts that are created through one-time e-mails if they follow SMTP or e-mail protocol regulation.” said a representative for the security industry.
As a result, Korea Credit Information Services expects that this issue can lead to some inconvenience for consumers. “At the moment, we manually block one-time e-mails whenever we find them.” said a representative for Korea Credit Information Services. “However, this method can prevent consumers from using our credit and insurance inquiry service.”
Korea Credit Information Services is considering about using a whitelist of e-mail accounts for its membership system. By doing so, it will be able to approve only particular IP addresses, e-mail addresses, or domains that are on whitelist.
“One-time e-mail can create huge inconvenience for our consumers as it can limit our services in the future.” said a representative for Korea Credit Information Services. “As a result, we are thinking about applying a whitelist to prevent any further issue.”
Staff Reporter Park, Yoonho | yuno@etnews.com