How to Prevent someone from Stealing your MPESA money through Swapping

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It’s now possible to prevent someone from stealing money from your MPESA account through Swapping. The first step is to call Safaricom through these numbers:100 and 200.By calling Safaricom after detecting suspicious activities in your phone number they will prevent any transaction and your money will be safeguarded.

Swapping of numbers happens when an employee of Safaricom or anyone familiar with the happenings in Safaricom provides information and technical skills regarding swapping. The individual at Safaricom will identify contacts with enough money to be stolen and supply the details of individual owning the number to their accomplice outside the company. The individual will then swap his number and withdraw the amount in the line. He will then dispose the number.

In regards to this, Safaricom has issued a statement on how you can respond when you realize that your contacts are being used by a stranger. Here is a statement from the company:

“Safaricom has noted growing concerns from the public on social engineering and theft of customer information leading to fraudulent SIM swaps.

We wish to advise customers to report any suspected interference with their SIM Cards or theft of personal details to us by calling 100 or 200, or via a text message to 333 for assistance. Customers should also report these cases to law enforcing agencies with urgency.

As a precautionary measure against social engineering, enabled by sharing of personal details, we would also like to remind our customers to safeguard information such as SIM and M-PESA PINs, dates of birth and national identity numbers.

Safaricom does not ask for personal information, and only contacts customers through our official number – 0722 000 000. If called by anybody purporting to be a Safaricom customer care representative using a different number, you are advised to immediately end the call and dial our customer care line 100 or 200 for clarification and assistance.

Safaricom remains committed to safeguarding customer information, and would like to reassure the public that we are working closely with security agencies to follow up this matter to its conclusion”