Mobile Sim Swap has increasingly become the tool that fraudsters are using to steal money from many hard-working entrepreneurs especially SMEs. It’s really sad that mobile telecom companies’ rogue employees are working with fraudsters to hack subscribers’ numbers and steal their hard-earned money, especially in Kenya’s mass markets.
Kindness in the form of “May I use your phone?” is what it takes for a hacker to steal your number from you. Yes!!! Just letting someone use your phone for a few minutes is all it takes for your mobile phone number to move from your phone to the hackers, as the hacker leaves you with his number. They don’t need to open your phone and remove your sim card. They don’t even need to use juju or Scopolamine “Devil’s Breath”. Just asking to use your phone, even when you dial the number yourself is enough for them to connect to a hacker. Yes!! a few minutes is all it takes, and by the time they hand your phone back to you, your phone number is long gone, and you have been left with another number. Before you know it your Mpesa (Mobile Money), account has been depleted, Fuliza (Safaricom’s Mpesa mobile loan), and every other loan including government loans that are accessible through a mobile phone number have been borrowed to the maximum limit. Wow unto if you are using mobile banking because the only response you will get from the banks and the telecom company is “Soo Sorry!!”, then you will be left to pay all those loans taken using your stollen mobile number.
A number of our clients and suppliers have lost a lot of money. The sad thing is, the hackers are fully aware of the difficulty in time and procedure in contacting telecom customer assistance through voice calls, as many are running on AI and other forms of robots, because accessing a human being to report the crime to the telecom companies will require you visiting their offices, or you knowing someone there who is willing to assist you quickly. Most of the time entrepreneurs have no idea their phone number has been exchanged, so all their Mpesa sales are being withdrawn by the hackers, because it is not unusual to experience delayed payment confirmations on their phones. During which time the hackers are busy withdrawing the victims hard earned sales, running purchases on ecommerce shops, and borrowing money from every mobile loan service provider they can access.
To avoid all this trauma just dial *100*100#, its purpose is to ensure the only way your registered mobile number can be changed or swapped from your existing sim card is at an authorized telecom desk in person with the national identification used in the sim registration. A disclaimer, kindly check with your local telecom to ensure the *100*100# is the USSD code protection in your country. Our research indicates it is universal with most telecoms, with a few exceptions for certain phones and service providers.
An observation we have noted is those entrepreneurs whose business mobile telephone numbers are on their company website, ecommerce shops, and social media handles are increasingly being targeted. This does not mean you remove your phone number from all websites and social media platforms. Every business has risks associated with it, markets are markets, and our African markets must continue to work despite the risks.
So how do we navigate some of these risks. Here are some tips to help you remain safe. Firstly! Put a check on your greed as the bible says put a fork to your throat when presented with abundance, because many hackers are using promises of more money through large sales to entice you. The goal is to keep you on the phone for a long time, as they swap your Sim card for theirs. Our recommendation is you develop a more formal procedure of quickly transitioning those conversations from voice calls to formal email communication, while being very careful to not open suspicious attachments because that is also another tactic hackers use. This approach may seem cold especially when we have been told to be charming with very carefully curated sales manipulative tactics. Hackers are very charismatic and charming especially when using deception to steal and destroy. Remember your goal is not to fall in love with every caller, just keep it straight, short, and simple.
Developing auto responders for your most frequently asked questions is another very effective technique. We are very intentional about putting as much content as we can about our business and our most frequently asked questions on all our social media platform. Many of our callers get very shocked when we send them back to our websites especially when they choose to ignore our auto responders and ask questions that we have already answered on all our websites and social media handles. We had to decide to pay more attention in serving paying customers over customer’s price discovery calls on our goods or services. They say the customer is always right, maybe…. But wisdom is using technology to answer their questions without us having to repeat ourselves 500 times. It saves time and improves our search engine optimizations and google analysis.
Develop the habit of “Blocking numbers” and being intentional about reporting them on TrueCaller and CallerID apps. TrueCaller has really saved our business valuable time and especially the comments sections where numbers have been reported as scammers. In addition to blocking numbers, also save them in your phone’s contacts list as scammers, or hackers. It really helps a lot with future calls and social media interactions. Scammers never learn, they have a tendency of circling back to you.
Finally, do not let the international mobile numbers impress you. Today it is very easy to get a mobile telephone number for any country online either through your friends or virtually using mobile money or credit cards. We are in owe of the number of international calls we receive from many Kenyan prison inmates. Hackers are busy working full time, and AI is certainly making their work much easier. Be careful and protect your hard-earned money in these tough economic times. We hope you have learnt something new; our goal is always to make markets work for African farmers, traders, and professionals especially women and youth.