07 April 2022

The Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications (GCT) is instituting warning systems to identify and curb mobile money fraud in the country, as the services continue to evolve and new types of fraud emerge in the sector.

Identity theft through SIM swapping, promotional and social engineering scams are the highly reported incidents of fraud. This has brought about a significant economic loss for users.

So far, 35,000 incidents of fraud have been reported to the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications. About 28,000 devices have been blocked. Seventeen thousand IDs have been blacklisted.

“Mobile money services in Ghana are secured. But the challenge has always been our cyber hygiene. Our call is that you do not disclose your passwords or pins to anyone,” said Ken Ashigbey, chief executive officer, GCT. “You will observe that there are mistakes even in the messages they send. It isn’t that they do not know how to spell. They deliberately do it to beat artificial intelligence. But they always become unsuccessful and get blocked”.

Currently, a fraud control dashboard has been introduced to track and block perpetrators.

“Numbers that are reported to have consistently perpetrated fraudulent acts get blocked.,” Ken Ashigbey added. “When it is reported to the dashboard, the number as well as the device is blocked on all networks. If you suspect any scam or fraudulent number, kindly call 419 and report the number. It will be investigated as soon as possible.”