Safaricon has come under fire recently after a spate of incidents involving SIM swaps. They have now come up with a[COLOR=rgb(184, 49, 47)] [SIZE=6]new USSD 100100# [/SIZE]which they say effectively blacklists your line from being replaced at an MPESA shop and it can only be replaced at a SafariCON Customer Care Center.
There are some employees in their IT Dept that collude with thugs and leakout SIM Serial Numbers and Original SIM PINs that are normally printed on the SIM plastic plate, with these codes the thieves just have to get the victims ID number and make fake Colored ID and go to MPESA shop to replace your line, I don’t know how they reset your MPESA PIN and Fuliza the maximum possible amount from the victim’s line and borrow from 5 Loan apps using your name, ID number and phone number.
Generally Kenyans need to be classed on how to keep their personal information safe while online. With the influx of naija yahoo boys into this country, very soon watu wengi watalia machoos.
Sielewi why the rest of the country is now waking up to this SIM Swap menace. This thing has been the main economic activity in Mulot, Bomet County ever since I was in high school.
Its called Kenya. I approach a safaricom IT person I give her 5million cash anipee 1000 simcards’details I feed my 100 temprorary employees tufulize/mshwarii/kcbmpesa for a total of 20M minimum. Mmmmh then nimDFBLBH
But surely, there are limits to how much somebody can borrow? Doesn’t someone need a solid repayment history in order to be advanced huge sums of money? If a large % of customers are already blacklisted by the CRB, doesn’t that severely limit the number of customer SIMs that can be used to take out mobile loans? And when it comes to linked bank accounts, doesn’t one need a PIN or password before they can transact?
Anyway we have essentially become a nation of crooks. The safeguards that are meant to protect consumers only exist on paper. If a telco’s employees can actually be involved in such scams, NTSA employees being involved in vehicle registration scams, then i guess there is no limit to how much fraud can take place when you factor in collusion between those who should be regulators and the crooks orchestrating these heists.
Lesson ni moja; don’t link bank accounts that transact huge sums of money to your mobile phone.