Kenya is full of talented young people in the field of communication: app developers, IT specialists and web designers. Unfortunately, hunger and the desire to live better (and for some, their very nature) turn many of them into hackers, cybercriminals or simply crooks trying to get by on their wits.

This is why scams of all kinds, especially telephone scams, are rife in Kenya.
These scams affect everyone, but foreigners are their favourite victims due to their lack of knowledge of Kenyan rules and bureaucracy.

Occasionally, thanks to reports from our readers and our own investigations, we update you on how these scams work and how to prevent tech-savvy criminals from accessing our databases. This can mean email addresses, Mpesa accounts, cloning your phone card to access your address book and try to scam other people. But that's not all. Using your phone number linked to your email address and personal details, they can obtain login codes for any other database you have, from social media accounts to banking apps.

How does the latest type of scam work?
You will receive a call from a phone number you do not have in your memory.
Until recently, the voice contacting you, calling you by name, said they were calling on behalf of Safaricom, your SIM card operator.
Following a media campaign by the company itself, which emphasised that calls from Safaricom employees can only come from one switchboard, the number 0722000000, and that the caller is not authorised to ask you for any codes or passwords. In any case, if you have any problems, you have the right not to discuss them over the phone but to go to a Safaricom store.

After this campaign, a summary of which can be found in our previous article https://malindikenya.net/it/articoli/notizie/ultime-notizie/truffe-safaricom-in-kenya-come-prevenirle.html, telephone scammers have changed their tactics.
They now pose as government employees, either from “Huduma Namba”, a service for citizens and residents of Kenya to reform the identity card system, or from the Communication Authority of Kenya, the state institution responsible for telecommunications.

The fake operator will identify themselves and introduce themselves by name, and will say that the problem is that your card has been registered twice and must be unlocked immediately to avoid it being blocked. What might lead you to trust the scammer is that they not only know your name, but also your passport details and email address.
They will then tell you that they are sending an unlock code to your phone and ask you to read it to them.
It is essential that you do not read out the numbers, as this would allow the scammer to access your services. Instead, you should not only end the call, but also block the number on your phone immediately, otherwise they will try to call you back in an even more threatening tone.

This is the most popular phone scam at the moment, along with others, especially international ones that use prefixes such as +252 (Somalia), +963 (Syria), +37 (Latvia) and even +41 (Switzerland). This is an even more direct form of hacking, which aims to drain phone credit and store numbers to better study other possibilities for illegal actions.
Usually, the phone rings once and you may be tempted to call back. The advice, of course, is never to do so, especially for numbers with the above prefixes, and as far as Safaricom is concerned, to forward the number to the anti-fraud service 333 so that the company can block the number across the entire national network.
Kenya is also attractive because of the use of the Mpesa credit and money transfer platform on Safaricom cards.