There’s no doubt that fraudsters have been busy falsely registering SIM cards with other people’s ID numbers without consent be it Safaricom, Airtel or Telkom. This is evident through the rising number of scams involving mobile money services that require people to be registered using their ID numbers.

This could be blamed in part on the lenient data protection laws in Kenya that don’t give the authorities much to work with. And even with the laws in place at the moment, they do not seem to be executed well in an aim to protect the country’s citizens who end up victims to the various fraud cases.

But it looks like Safaricom is making an effort to make it easier for Kenyans to avoid these cases of having their identities stolen to register other SIM cards. As reported first by Techweez, this is through the new USSD code that allows customers to:

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1. Check their numbers alongside the credentials used to register it.
2. Report unknown numbers associated with their ID.
3. Cancel any reported numbers.

All one has to do is:

1. Dial *106#.
2. Select 1: Check my numbers.
3. If there are any numbers that you don’t recognise:

• Go back to the home menu.
• Select 2: Report unknown number
• Select the number that you do not know.
• After it’s confirmed as a reported number select 4: Cancel a reported number, then select it and confirm.

Fraudsters have been able to easily register SIM cards using other people’s IDs and even go further to use them to access other services including mobile loans. This has gone a long way into having people on CRB lists for loans they did not even borrow.

So, it is quite clear that a whole lot needs to be done when it comes to tightening SIM card registration processes in order to avoid these cases in the first place.