WhatsApp begging scam - Why Vodacom and MTN can't protect your phone number

Hanno Labuschagne

Hanno Labuschagne

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WhatsApp begging scam - Why Vodacom and MTN can't protect your phone number

South Africans are being hit by a new spin on an old scam. Criminals hijack your WhatsApp account by taking control of your phone number, then ask your contacts to send them money.

Variants of this scam are seen all over the world. This time, though, scammers exploited weaknesses in South Africa’s number portability systems to gain control of people’s phone numbers.

Once the scammer has successfully ported your number, they install WhatsApp and reportedly wait for your contacts to send you a message, or use group chats to find victims to scam.
 
Well all my contacts know me by now. Know I would never ask for money even though I might have stuff happening.

They would want to speak to ME first. Plus they all know what my voice sounds like lol. Noone gonna fake my voice. ROF en ONBESKOF. Hahaha
 
So, now the operators are hiding behind the regs to hide their inefficiency in implementing more secure porting requests. Imagine that.

It suits them all to make this easy. To H with the client.
A simple court order interdicting ICASA to allow them to go ahead with the opt-in process should be enough.
 
Grubscrew said:
So Telkom users are safe from this?
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No not at all. Your number will be ported out and you won't even know because Telkom does not disable the simcard they simply allocate a new random number to the simcard with all the airtime and data still there.

The issue is rica agents and simcard distribution companies. They allow port requests without confirmation. Call centre porting for example Cellc port me allows porting without confirmation by simply giving the number you wish to port over the phone with no confirmation.

As networks start to clamp down on sim swap fraud the new fraud is porting and then Cellc goes to court to make it easy for criminals. Pathetic when is that company folding?
 
Geoff.D said:
So, now the operators are hiding behind the regs to hide their inefficiency in implementing more secure porting requests. Imagine that.

It suits them all to make this easy. To H with the client.
A simple court order interdicting ICASA to allow them to go ahead with the opt-in process should be enough.
Click to expand...

Did you read the article? MTN and Vodacom fought against Cellc and MTN even too them to court but Cellc won the case and took on ICASA to prevent them from amending the porting. There is only 1 bad guy here. Cellc. They are broke but spend money on fighting against a system that can actually prevent fraud....
 
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Hi all, I had a terrible experience during December to January. I changed service providers and it took them almost 2 weeks to port my number. The short story is - I was working on two phones and had one number and two service providers. It was really strange. I was worried about this as I've heard stories before. The store didn't seem to care much just escalated my request. I then contacted the new service provider and yet to receive a call back. I want to take this further as I am worried. Would anyone know who I can contact? Thanks for your time.
 
Anyone remember Cellphones Direct?
That's how I got my first phone in around 1995. A Fizz. Philips Fizz.

Lemme go. We're shitting a bit of ESKOM now. Bit dark.
 
Utogi said:
Hi all, I had a terrible experience during December to January. I changed service providers and it took them almost 2 weeks to port my number. The short story is - I was working on two phones and had one number and two service providers. It was really strange. I was worried about this as I've heard stories before. The store didn't seem to care much just escalated my request. I then contacted the new service provider and yet to receive a call back. I want to take this further as I am worried. Would anyone know who I can contact? Thanks for your time.
Click to expand...

What network. It's just an issue with the port process. Number gets activated on new network and the old network disconnects simcard and all network update routing for your number to the new network. Something went wrong and the old network did not disconnect the simcard and obviously some of the networks did not update the routing so you could find that some calls go to the old simcard and some to the new simcard.
 
While MTN stated that it implemented the system as an extra security measure to curb unauthorised porting, Cell C contended that Vodacom and MTN were blocking legitimate port requests.
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Considering the crap state of the Cell C network, it is safe to assume that any request to port to Cell C is not legitimate.
 
cavedog said:
Did you read the article? MTN and Vodacom fought against Cellc and MTN even too them to court but Cellc won the case and took on ICASA to prevent them from amending the porting. There is only 1 bad guy here. Cellc. They are broke but spend money on fighting against a system that can actually prevent fraud....
Click to expand...
Yes, on one level you're correct. But it's not all on Cell C:

mybroadband.co.za

How Vodacom and MTN nearly killed porting to Cell C

In April, Vodacom and MTN implemented a questionable SMS procedure which resulted in the majority of porting requests to Cell C being rejected.
mybroadband.co.za mybroadband.co.za
Cell C stated that even when a subscriber selected to be ported within the time frame, the request would still be rejected in some cases.

It was clear that Vodacom and MTN’s new process prevented many of their subscribers who wanted to port to another provider from doing so.
Click to expand...
However, the result was we got screwed either way, instead of fixing it, it was bypassed to opt-out.
 
It sounds so easy to do this, think I need to do it but instead of borrowing money I'll just tell my friends contacts obscenities like deciding to marry a Nigerian or something.
 
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