Fraudulent wireless application service providers (WASPs) are taking money from Vodacom and MTN subscribers without their permission.<\/p>\n
What makes the situation worse is that Vodacom and MTN are well aware of this problem but refuse to block these services by default.<\/p>\n
MyBroadband\u2019s latest disappearing airtime investigation<\/strong><\/a> showed that money was disappearing from our MTN test account.<\/p>\n A fraudulent WASP transaction was to blame for the disappearing airtime, where the SIM was subscribed to an MTN service without our knowledge or permission.<\/p>\n No double opt-in SMS was received by us, either.<\/p>\n The same thing happens to thousands of Vodacom and MTN subscribers, with most of them unaware that their airtime is being stolen.<\/p>\n The scale of this problem has never been fully disclosed by the mobile operators, but one can assume that it is a multi-million-rand scheme.<\/p>\n In MyBroadband\u2019s case, R4 per day was taken from our account, which depleted R10 airtime in 3 days.<\/p>\n With fraudulent WASPs targeting millions of Vodacom and MTN subscribers, losses are therefore in the millions.<\/p>\n This raises the question: Why don’t Vodacom and MTN block all WASP services by default, with the option of enabling them if needed?<\/p>\n The reason is money, and lots of it.<\/p>\n The mobile operators are making a tidy profit from these services and are not willing to lose out on this revenue – even if it means tolerating fraudulent activity on their networks.<\/p>\n The truth is that most Vodacom and MTN subscribers are not interested in WASP services and would prefer to have their accounts safeguarded against fraudulent activity.<\/p>\n It therefore makes perfect sense for the mobile operators to protect their subscribers and block all WASP billing by default.<\/p>\n A subscriber can then request WASP billing to be enabled if they are interested in subscribing to one of these services.<\/p>\n This will prevent fraudulent WASPs stealing money from subscribers, and still give them the freedom to use these services if they want to.<\/p>\n The operators have known for a decade<\/strong><\/a> that a large portion of all WASP subscription services are fraudulent, but have been making good money from this practice.<\/p>\n Despite numerous media reports and thousands of customer complaints over the years, the two mobile giants have not resolved this problem.<\/p>\n Vodacom confirmed that it is well aware of the illegal activity on its network, adding that it has taken a number of measures to block this activity.<\/p>\n This includes the suspension and termination of service providers and their affiliate content aggregators.<\/p>\n \u201cVodacom has subsequently installed a double opt-in option via USSD to confirm subscription to WASP content services,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe also regularly upgrade our anti-fraud detection software to curb potential fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n These measures, Vodacom said, have proven to be highly successful, as evidenced by the significant decline in WASP-related queries from Vodacom customers in recent months.<\/p>\n On the question of blocking all WASP billing by default, it said that \u201csimilar services around the world, such as Apple iStore and Google Play, are active by default\u201d.<\/p>\n It added that for customers that prefer not to use credit cards, they can access and subscribe to services that they might otherwise not have access to.<\/p>\n Jacqui O’Sullivan, executive for corporate affairs at MTN SA, said they believe a balance needs to be struck between offering customers ease of access, while still providing the necessary security protocols.<\/p>\n She highlighted that MTN SA has implemented numerous measures to fight fraudulent WASP subscriptions.<\/p>\n This includes double opt-in, blocking fraudulent website URLs, fraud detection, alerts for charges, and the ability to view and block all premium-rated services.<\/p>\n MTN said these measures have been successful, and it has seen a 38.6% drop in calls relating to WASP and digital content subscriptions this year.<\/p>\n The company has also suspended all programmatic media buying activities until all fraud prevention measures have been implemented.<\/p>\n Disappearing airtime is often caused by fraudulent service providers taking money from Vodacom and MTN subscriber accounts, and the two mobile giants are profiting from it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":86987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[35863,35,42,41,5054],"class_list":["post-277015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-disappearing-airtime","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-vodacom","tag-wasp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277015"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277015"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":278427,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277015\/revisions\/278427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Money-making scheme<\/h3>\n
Blocking all WASPs by default<\/h3>\n
Vodacom comments<\/h3>\n
MTN comments<\/h3>\n
Now read:\u00a0Disappearing airtime in South Africa is still real \u2013 here is the proof<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"