WeeklySA_AdminONE-TIME-PIN ACCESS: Criminals get hold of confidential personal ID information
Identity or subscription fraud has become a threat impacting network operators and customers around the world, as criminals constantly work to find new ways to beat fraud prevention systems.
Jacqui O’Sullivan, Executive for Corporate Affairs at MTN SA said at MTN, they aim to protect customers from fraudulent transactions that often originate elsewhere, often through identity theft. She said ID theft is often just the start of the fraud, with a criminal getting hold of sufficient personal information from an Identity Document to initiate the fraudulent activity.
“We have, however, observed the decline in the frequency of these scams and fraud, noting at times that there has been an uptick in this type of fraud particularly during the festive season. “she said.
On occasion, when MTN observe an uptick in these types of scams, they immediately and proactively warn all customers to be aware of the new scam, she said. O’Sullivan said in some incidents, a criminal, claiming to be an MTN call centre agent, requests the customer’s security details under the pretence that they were blocking the processing of a SIM swap request that was being made on the subscriber’s number without their knowledge or authorisation.
The scammers then use the customer’s responses, which they obtained during the call, to perform an actual fraudulent SIM swap, she said. MTN has previously communicated to customers that it would not contact customers from its call centre to block the processing of a SIM swap request.
“We have also previously urged all our customers not to respond to unsolicited calls and requests for their security details from an unknown number,”O’Sullivan said.
MTN has for the past two years been rolling out in-store biometrics as an additional layer of security to further halt such criminal activity.
She said MTN has also introduced secure (One Time Passwords) OTP access to systems whereby users who are affected then have a clear tracking and audit log.
“Our monitoring systems give us a view of all related Sim Swap activities and MTN only processes SIM swap requests between 07:00 to 20:00. This is due to our focus on further tightening security measures to avoid SIM swap fraud” she said.
