Chief Enterprise Business Officer at MTN Ghana, Daniel Asare, has asked all users of the various telecommunication networks to keep their personal pin numbers private in order to protect themselves from scammers.

He stated that despite numerous attempts by MTN and other networks to crack down on these fraudsters in coordination with security services, they continue to advance daily with new technology in their modes of operation.

Under no circumstances, he said, should anyone reveal his data or pin code to anyone, even if they identify themselves as MTN employees.

"These days fraudsters have upgraded themselves, be very vigilante with them. They are high grade fraudsters who are coming with the advance technologies. Some have even set up call centers where they use artificial intelligence and they are able to predict based on maybe some of the transactions you've done online. They are even able to steal your information. That's what we call identity fraud, and they try to use that to come onto your network", he said.

He claims that these people used to just target mobile money wallets, but now that MTN service providers are aware of this, they have switched their activities to bank accounts.

In a brief interview with media after 2023 Media and Stakeholders Forum in Kumasi, he made all of these remarks.

This year's programme which was themed; "Leveraging Technology to Serve Customers through Media Excellence, was meant to educate both the media and the general public on how they can adapt to new technologies and take advantage of it in their daily activities. It was also meant to explore these technologies by the service providers in their quest to serve their customers better and to clamp down on fraudsters.

In order to establish a united front against these fraudsters, he mentioned that MTN has worked with cyber security and other security authorities in their efforts to deal with such fraudulent activities.

"But in all that case, like I said that the identity text is more important. You need to protect your identity so that you don't leak information to them", he added.

He said, another measure the telecommunication network has put in place is an API that MTN has brought up to check SIM swap.

He stated: "We check SIM swap because most of these start with SIM swap and on one front, we stop all third party point from these SIM swap. In the past, you can go to an agent point and do a SIM swap. Now we've realised that most of the fraud is coming from there. Once they do the swap they try to go into your bank account and then to withdraw money, and that is where the SIM swap API comes in. So, we work with some of the bank's who are currently using it. They put in a parameter to do that check".

He continued by saying that the bank is able to freeze transactions until you physically visit their office so they can verify your genuine identification based on the recentness of the SIM swap or how recently it was completed.

Both regional and national MTN officers, as well as media editors from all categories, attended the 2023 media (editors) and stakeholder forum, which was hosted at the Greenwood Event Center in Asokwa, Kumasi. Some chiefs were among the other dignitaries who attended the event.