Council alarmed by wave of mobile money thefts

Dar es Salaam. The wave of mobile money theft is increasing as fraudsters have come up with new ways of stealing.

Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority – Consumer Consultative Council- (TCRA-CCC) now warns the mobile money users to be more careful by taking stern actions including denying to give their passwords to unknown people who call or send them SMSs asking for such information.

Acting executive secretary for TCCRA- CCC Mary Shao said such cases were increasing amongst mobile money users in which people end up having their mobile money balances tempered with.

She explained for instance, the unscrupulous individuals would send an SMS to a mobile money user, telling them that someone has mistakenly sent them money to their mobile money accounts.

“After receiving this SMS, you will get another SMS which will also seem to have been sent by your network’s customer service personnel, telling you to send back the supposedly money that was mistakenly sent to you,” she explained.

She urged mobile money users not to respond to any messages of this nature or take any action as suggested by these SMSs.

“You should always ignore such SMSs even if they come from a number that you recognise, the best thing to do is to call that number using a different number to confirm.”

Vodacom Tanzania also warned its customers against fraudsters who call them and tell them that they have won money from Nogesha Upendo promotion or M-Pesa bonus.

“We at Vodacom Tanzania don’t have the tendency of calling our customers to inform them about the distribution of the M-Pesa bonus, rather we send them their profit share as per each customer’s M-Pesa activity as required by the Bank of Tanzania,” said Vodacom Head of Corporate Communication and Public Relations Jacqueline Materu.

She noted that the firm never asks its customers to share their M-Pesa passwords before sending them the cash they have won from promotions.