Issues of people’s IDs being used to register sim cards without their consent have been on the rise. With the increased mobile phone connectivity, millions of users have been left vulnerable to data breaches and privacy issues. Partly, this is due to the lack of data protection laws in Kenya. There should be a legal framework that is to protect users against these fraud cases, we have not seen the law come in handy at a time. Kenyan citizens are seeing blatant abuses of their private data.
Cybercriminals illegally use other people’s Identification Numbers to register sim cards and then going to take loans out of them. Without your knowledge, your name is being used by some individuals to take out loans that may come later to hurt you. To protect yourself from this kind of vulnerability of your identification details being used to commit the crime, mobile service providers Safaricom and Airtel have provided a solution for this.
To check phone numbers registered using your ID you can access it through *106#. The USSD menu allows you to:
1. Check your numbers alongside the credentials used to register it.
2. Report unknown numbers associated with your ID.
3. Cancel any reported numbers.
