The pandemic increase in the rate of fraudulent activities in Nigeria is seriously overwhelming especially on mobile devices.
Fraudsters and scammers have devised difference means and ways of scamming and defrauding unsuspecting individuals; this they do through waylaying of individual, pretending to be sick or strangers/visitors in a particular environment or in transit, which they engage any victim of theirs in a serious and keen discussion and may later lead into hypnotizing of such victims.
In recent times, fraudsters have found a convenient way of gathering people’s information through their bank verification number (BVN). They call customers informing them of non-existing upgrade on their account or BVN and so many people have fallen victim of such.
The question is “how do fraudsters get access to people’s BVN”? Experience, observation and research has shown that banks do not divulge BVN to third party, so where do these guys get those BVN from?
The following are possible ways to get people’s BVN:
Government schemes: Recently government initiated trader-moni where market men and women and non-traders gave out every information of theirs. Fraudsters can access such data base and get people’s BVN.
Online registration at cafes: People visit cyber cafes for online registrations and sometimes their BVN is demanded. Scammers can also get one’s details on such.
Conniving with a Bank staff: Fraudsters do connive with staff of financial institutions in other to get their customers’ BVN based on certain agreement and arrangement.
Lastly, Network providers: The network providers we have in this country are fond of recycling numbers after sometimes that a particular customer do not use their sim card.
Fraudsters can go any length to buy such recycled numbers and dial a particular code and get the persons BVN.
The challenges of recycling numbers
During sim registration, all the information of a particular individual is captured viz finger prints, face, residential address, date of birth, maidens name among others. When such number is recycled, it will carry all the detail of the first owner.
Seeing the aforementioned fraudsters capitalize on this and perpetuate all fraudulent activities because no matter what happened they can’t be located being that that is not their profile.
When fraudulent activities occurred through such number, at the end of the day an innocent person may be traced.
Fraudsters are fond of using recycled number to call unsuspecting individuals asking of their account details such as card number, CVV, pin numbers among others because at the long run, nobody can trace them.
Way Out
In order to curb this menace to the barest minimum; government agencies, parastatals and ministries handling any scheme or empowerment programme should treat individual’s information with high sense of secrecy.
Secondly, Individuals going to cyber cafes for different online registration should be careful in writing down some vital information about themselves especially their account details.
Financial institutions should caution their staff on the dangers of perpetrating such heinous act and the implication of such.
Finally, government should as a matter of urgency direct the Nigerian Communication Commission to monitor and regulate the issue of recycling of numbers in Nigeria to avert further damage.
But if numbers must be recycled, then all the information on such numbers must be wiped away completely.
Kayode writes from Bauchi, he can be reached viaj[email protected]
