The Ministry of Science and Technology’s Circular 08, which provides guidance on subscriber identity verification, has been in effect for more than two weeks. Since then, many SIM cards have been blocked due to incomplete or unverified personal information.
Mobile operators said that notifications have been sent in batches since April 15 to subscribers with incomplete or incorrect registration details, asking them to complete verification. As a result, SIM blocking began in early May after a 15-day grace period.
Under the roadmap, after Circular 08 took effect, the VNeID application will send phased notifications to users requiring them to confirm their subscriber information. If users do not confirm via VNeID, they will receive an SMS requesting re-verification within five days. Failure to comply will result in one-way service suspension, followed by two-way blocking and eventual SIM deactivation.
A separate group of users is also required to immediately re-verify their SIM information, particularly those who registered using older identity documents such as nine-digit national ID cards, 12-digit citizen ID cards, or passports.
The current SIM ownership verification process follows the “data cleaning” campaign carried out in 2023. During that period, authorities cross-checked information for tens of millions of mobile subscribers and found around 17 million cases with incorrect data. Of these, 11 million were updated, while 6 million SIM subscriptions were suspended.
