Telecommunication giant Safaricom on Friday announced a new security feature to curb fraud. The feature will alert customers via SMS whenever someone tries to register a line using their credentials. The SMS alert from 707 will immediately be sent to your handset and you can reply with ‘NO’ if you are not the one who initiated the registration.
This move is aimed at curbing fraud as rogue individuals have been obtaining details of clients and use them to register new lines and access M-Pesa accounts.
Recently, the Communications Authority of Kenya urged Kenyans to be on the lookout for unscrupulous persons sending messages to mobile subscribers purportedly to caution them that they have exceeded the maximum number of SIM cards allowed per subscriber.
The messages were crafted to appear as originating from the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), the predecessor to the Communication Authority of Kenya (CA).
This type of scam is called Smishing; where the fraudster sends SMS texts purporting to originate from a reputable company with the purpose of tricking subscribers into revealing personal information such as ID numbers, usernames, passwords, PINS and credit card details among other personal details.
The criminals use the information obtained to defraud the recipient.
The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) had also warned Kenyans about the various ways criminals could be using to defraud them, including phishing.
This is basically a cybercrime in which a target is contacted by email, telephone or text message by someone posing as a legitimate institution to lure individuals into providing sensitive data such as personally identifiable information, banking and credit card details, and passwords.
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