Kenya, South Africa and Cameroon are said to be the top three hot spots for mobile fraudsters – according to cybersecurity company, Evina. These African countries face suspicious mobile-based billing transactions of 51%, 30% and 10%, respectively.
“Africa’s youthful population that is mostly unbanked and using some 900 million mobile money accounts is particularly hard-hit by professional cybercriminals from around the world, who together cost Africa some $4 billion every year,” says David Lotfi, CEO of Evina.
Fraudsters are impacting the long-term sustainability of the digital advertising and mobile payments industries, in particular, by perpetrating thousands of mobile-based fraud attempts daily.
Direct Carrier Billing (DCB) where users are billed for purchases directly on their phone bills is being impacted by two primary forms of mobile fraud: clickjacking where a fraudster intercepts a legitimate click and unknowingly directs the user to a website where sensitive financial and other details can be stolen, and malicious apps that seek to do the same.
While embedding malware in malicious apps can be a more refined fraudulent technique, clickjacking is a very basic type of fraud that has been around for at least five years and mostly eradicated in large parts of the mobile world.
“Fraud is a feasible obstacle to overcome and there really is no excuse for the fact that one in three mobile subscriptions attempts in South Africa, for example, is fraudulent. Fraudsters who continue – in 2020 – to steal Africa’s wealth can be beaten with the right tools that we already use to protect millions of mobile transactions every day,” adds Lotfi.
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