Much will be said about the Communication Authority’s decree for all mobile telephone users to (re) register their numbers or risk deactivation.
Although it has postponed the April 15 deadline by six months, some questions linger. To its credit, the decree comes at a time when Kenyans have been complaining about scammers targeting digital wallets.
The typical scam involves an unidentified caller (sometimes with a foreign twang) ringing your number, asking your name and dropping a detail here and there about you. After making you comfortable that they know you, they seek some help you can easily give (ie guiding them to The Stanley in Nairobi).
Somewhere, the smooth-talking conmen (women are rare and I wonder why) drop the idea that they are stuck at Mombasa port with precious goods, or that they are in need of a place to exchange dollars to complete a transaction. They let you in that once you give certain details (full name, ID or passport number and email etc), you will get a generous cut. That is the catch.
Once you send those details, you will probably get a call or two to confirm, during which, if you do not hold your phone close to your chest, it will be emptied of all the relevant contents. The rest, as they say, is history. Yours truly has been a victim but that’s another story.
The scam is so common that on Easter weekend, #KamitiCallCentre was trending on Twitter, which is what takes us back to the CA decree.
Why is it that CA, as a regulator, has for years presided over a system that scams Kenyans? For example, the #KamitiCallCentre scam remains a strange paradox. Pictures of those caught in the act show thousands of SIM cards spread on the floor and dozens of cheap phones the scammers use from inside Kamiti Maximum Security Prison.
CA is not a mobile telephone company but it regulates such operations. Established in 1999 by the Kenya Information and Communications Act, 1998, it “is responsible for facilitating the development of the information and communications sectors including; broadcasting, cybersecurity, multimedia, telecommunications, electronic commerce, postal and courier services.”
Among others, it licenses all systems and services in the communications industry, including telecommunications, postal, courier and broadcasting.
On its website, CA says it is also responsible for “protecting consumer rights within the communications environment”. On top of the self-confessed failures, it would amount to shooting oneself in the foot if CA claims it is not aware Kenyans are scammed daily by the Kamiti gangs right under its nose.
CA and mobile phone operators have reminded Kenyans to send the number of the offending scammer to 333. Yet, typically, nothing comes out of the effort. Apart from a Thank You message from 333 waxing lyrical about you helping them improve cyber security and blocking the number (or something like that), nobody has ever confessed being helped beyond that. Has CA ever published a report on the 333 complaints?
I would be very glad to recover the money a scammer got from my phone after selling me an attractive contract. I saved the scammer’s number in case CA wants to know.
A famous Kenyan blogger has attempted to explain CA’s belated attempt to get all phone numbers registered afresh. He says the main objective is to catch the Kamiti scammers. Naturally, there are many others who are not necessarily operating from behind prison bars, and not all of them are “stuck in Lodwar” looking for The Stanley in Nairobi. Neither are they as sophisticated.
CA would be hard-pressed to find a Kenyan mobile phone user who has never received a message like: “Tuma kwa hii number. Ire ingine imehalimbika”. Or “Mum we have Mathematics exam tomorrow and my set was stolen. Send 2k to Mwalimu Jeff’s number here, he’s more trustworthy”.
More Kenyans are probably being scammed.
In response to Kenyans’ complaints that the decree was hurried and strange, CA sent out a press statement saying it had listened to the concerns and postponed the deadline to October 15.
Curiously, it cited three main concerns: How to address the needs of those outside the country (since registration initially required presenting oneself for a picture to be taken); how to reach subscribers in remote parts of the country; and vulnerable persons who may, for whatever reason, be unable to present themselves physically for registration.
Needless to say, CA failed to speak on the biggest elephant in the room: Privacy of subscriber information given in the latest registration, and that previously given. For example, will CA explain (or make operators do so) how political parties “registered” Kenyans as party members, with the corresponding mobile telephone numbers complete with ID numbers?
While evidently commendable on the face of it, the results of the CA decree remain to be seen. If it will flatten #KamitiCallCentre, that would be a great achievement. For now, one wonders if cyber security exists and why the most notorious scammers have been operating from a maximum security prison.
Dan Okoth teaches journalism and communication at the Technical University of Kenya
