{"id":643841,"date":"2026-04-28T15:01:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T13:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=643841"},"modified":"2026-04-28T15:04:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T13:04:10","slug":"former-vodacom-exec-says-peoples-faces-must-be-linked-to-sim-cards-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/643841-former-vodacom-exec-says-peoples-faces-must-be-linked-to-sim-cards-in-south-africa.html","title":{"rendered":"Former Vodacom exec says people’s faces must be linked to SIM cards in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Former Vodacom chief risk officer Johan van Graan has proposed requiring biometric verification for SIM card registrations in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Van Graan, the Regulation of Interception of Communications Act (RICA) is flawed, and requiring facial recognition for SIM card registrations will help reduce SIM swap fraud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Van Graan said eliminating SIM card fraud would go a long way to reducing Internet banking fraud and social media account takeovers in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“SIM swap fraud is the enabler that criminals use to intercept one-time passwords to take over a social media account,” he told<\/a> Jeremy Maggs on Moneyweb@Midday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The actual fraud is by accessing the Internet banking where they have previously phished the PIN and password of a customer, sending WhatsApp messages to say: I need money, please send money.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Van Graan explained that RICA made it very difficult for networks to verify that someone requesting a SIM swap was the legitimate owner of the cellphone number.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“That’s why I’m advocating to change RICA for biometric recognition to be included at the time of verification,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I propose face recognition because that works in the banking sector for FICA, and then when a SIM swap does take place, networks must use that facial recognition to validate.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Van Graan said such requirements would stop fraudulent SIM swaps and vastly reduce other kinds of fraud in South Africa. “It won’t stop it 100%, but it will reduce it,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The former Vodacom executive also highlighted vulnerabilities within RICA in South Africa, noting that while there was some control in the postpaid segment, the majority of customers were on prepaid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There’s no validation of the information. No copies of the IDs are kept. None of that information is kept,” Van Graan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the postpaid segment, mobile networks conduct credit vetting, allowing them to gather more information about customers from reputable sources. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“80% of our customers in South Africa are prepaid. So, there is no effective validation for when there’s a SIM swap,” Van Graan said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SIM swap loophole in South Africa<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa’s current number porting regulations require cellular users to actively opt out<\/a> of a SIM swap if they have not requested one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That creates an opening for fraudsters to hijack people’s numbers and access sensitive information, such as one-time PINs sent from their banks, while they were travelling abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several cellular customers in South Africa previously told MyBroadband that they had suffered fraudulent SIM card swaps while they were out of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a SIM swap is requested, mobile networks send an SMS to the relevant number, prompting the owner to approve the process or opt out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is problematic when travelling overseas without SMS roaming, and in countries with significant time differences from South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first case, the customer would not receive the SMS requesting approval of the SIM swap and therefore would not be able to opt out of the SIM swap within the set timeframe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the second case, due to the time difference, these SMSes may be delivered while the recipient is asleep, which could also cause them to miss the opt-out deadline. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A solution to this could be to shift the process to use opt-in rather than opt-out mechanisms for approving SIM swaps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through opt-in, a subscriber would have to actively confirm they want to swap their SIM, rather than ignore the message, for the swap to proceed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It should be noted that Vodacom and MTN tried to adjust their number porting processes from opt-out to opt-in in April 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Cell C challenged the move in the High Court, arguing that the change was unlawful under the 2005 porting regulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vodacom settled with Cell C and reverted to the opt-out approach, while MTN decided to continue the court fight. However, it lost and was forced to revert as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Vodacom executive Johan van Graan wants SIM card registrations to require biometric verification in South Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341076,"featured_media":643891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[355,9695,165,22223,19334,42,36874,12743,19260,99570,41],"class_list":["post-643841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-cell-c","tag-crime","tag-fraud","tag-internet-banking-fraud","tag-johan-van-graan","tag-mtn","tag-regulation-of-interception-of-communications-and-communication-related-information-act-rica","tag-sim-swap","tag-sim-swap-fraud","tag-sim-swaps","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643841"}],"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\/341076"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643841"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":643943,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643841\/revisions\/643943"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}