Police are now warning the public to be careful when they receive calls from people pretending to be officials or agents of mobile phone firms because you might just be the next victim
Tricks like receiving phone calls informing you of wining a competition have been on the rise for the past one year.The fraudsters are then able to access one’s details and even withdraw money by asking simple questions about the account holder.Some of the questions the fraudsters ask their targets include, how much their last top-up was, when they last used M-Pesa to send or receive money, and the account balance.
The fraudsters target clients of all mobile phone service providers that operate the money transfer services.Safaricom’s director of corporate Affairs, Mr Nzioka Waita, says the surge in crime targetting M-Pesa clients is not as a result of a lapse in the integrity of their system but the conmen were taking advantage of the gullibility of some customers.
Safaricom has put in place a number of initiatives to minimize fraud through the M-Pesa system by actively engaging in awareness creation among subscribers and agents to ensure they do not fall victim. It has also put a toll-free fraud hotline for customers. Any customer can use the SMS line 333 to report to Safaricom any suspected incidence of fraud free of charge at any time,
But this is not enough in stoping the crimes.Fraudulent acts of people out to fleese others their hard earned cash is dynamic and its effects are not to be underestimated. We need as kenyans tp learnnot to be gulible.This criminals understand our spychology and that is how they play around with our minds to get something out of us.
We should always report any incident however negligable it looks to the relevant authorities because you never know,you might just have been the victim
