Mobile Money fraud is one of the most common frauds in Ghana to be reported, normally on a daily basis which is practically in association with phone calls.
It is a type of fraud where thieving persons pretend to be of a reliable and trustworthy entity in an electronic communication, sometimes even acting as employees of companies, especially the popular Ghanaian network MTN, in order to get sensitive information such as usernames, phone numbers, mobile money PINs, and One Time Passwords (OTPs) for their own devious purposes.
Speaking in an interview for the second edition of Cyber Security Awareness today, November 17,2022 on Beach FM, Senior Computer Programmer and Client Support Analyst, Mr. Larry Donkor elaborated on how fraudulent techniques in connection to Mobile money are changing.
” Even in the mobile money space, a lot of things are happening where the fraudulent social engineers will call you and pretend to be a Telco company to get information that they want and use to either get money from your mobile money or also to use it against you.”
With basis on that statement, Mr. Larry Donkor put out an advice to individuals to be vigilant in protecting themselves against these fraudsters, following that no one knows when an attack like that will befall them, since it has become difficult to predict the malicious schemes of these cyber criminals in recent times.
According to him, “Never and ever give your pincode to anyone.”
He stated that with impersonation tactics, the works of these fraudsters are usually done by blindsiding these Telecommunication Companies as they are unaware of the frauds being done in their name against their customers untill it is reported.
He further stated that, “It is important that we the users pay attention to what happens on our phones.”
Moreover, the Client Support Analyst further stated that using just one password across all accounts poses a major threat to the users themselves.
“So immediately they get one of these codes, it means you’ve just opened the flood gates for them. They are able to penetrate into any account that you have because your encryption system is just bad”.
He advised individuals never to use just one password to encrypt several accounts on the basis of declaring how vulnerable technological systems are.
In setting a password for an account, Mr. Donkor layed out a few measures to consider.
“You don’t use anything that is relating to you as your password”
Per his words the first thing any hacker will try are the immediate things around you to crack your password. “Passwords should have a combination of alphabets, numbers and special characters”
Accordingly, ” When you go to the Cyber Security Authority website, there is a link there where you can check your password to see if it is strong or weak.”
“You just have to be on guard and the safest thing everyone can do is to be mindful of what they click online.”
