South Africa telco allows SIM registration with fake ID numbers: report

Many eSIMs get registered in South Africa with fake identity information on a mobile network’s website, flouting requirements of the country’s Regulation of Interception of Communications and Provision of Communication-related Information Act (RICA) of 2002.

The lid on this development was recently blown open by local publication GroundUp. In a report published November 11, the outlet describes how it was able to use the website of Me&you mobile, a mobile virtual network operator, to register virtual SIMs unperturbed. The company commenced operations in South Africa in 2015, but it started selling eSIMs last year.

The report mentions how improperly registered SIMs were generated after fake identity information – including me&you mobile’s logo passing for the SIM buyer’s photo – was successfully uploaded and validated on the portal.

In South Africa, RICA is the legislation that regulates the identification of mobile phone users through SIM registration. The law obliges everyone buying a physical or digital SIM to provide their personal information such as their name, identity number and address to the service provider, as the government says having a database of all registered SIMs in the country will help curb illegal activities perpetrated using mobile phones.

The GroundUp findings reveal that many unregistered SIMs are in circulation, many of them obtained easily from me&you mobile. The publication adds that in another investigation which uncovered fraud with the social benefits program run by the South Africa Social Security Agency (SASSA), fake SIM cards were used, but it didn’t establish if they were obtained from the me&you mobile platform.

GroundUp indicates that they got no response from me&you mobile for questions on the SIM registration issue, but they eventually got to talk to an official directed to them by one Director of the company, Donovan Bergsma.

The designated official told the outlet that all applications for eSIMs are reviewed within 24 hours, and after that, SIMs that were not registered with the correct information are disconnected from the network.

GroundUp says that claim is not entirely true.

Several countries, many in Africa, are implementing strict SIM card registration protocols as part of official policy efforts to curb crime enabled by mobile phones.

Article Topics

identity verification  |  SIM card registration  |  South Africa  |  telecom