12 January 2020
This scam is very invasive and leaves you helpless
As I got out of the car earlier this week, Bongani Bingwa of 702 was starting a conversation with a guest about a cellphone porting and WhatsApp scam. He was mid-sentence when I locked the car.
In any case, I thought, there are too many scams going around and I am too careful a guy to be caught up in things that require me to press links and provide private details to people or organisations I don’t scrutinise.
About two days later, my week of hell unfolds. It’s Wednesday, 4.14pm. I am in the office, sorting out pre-production issues when this message comes through: “Telkom SA: Dear Customer, We received a port-out request for this [my Telkom] number. If you did not request this please reply ‘STOP’ within 40 minutes of receipt of this SMS. No response within the time limit implies your consent, subject to Telkom release conditions. Please call 081 180 for any enquiries.”
What the hell is going on? Alarms are set off in my mind. Shucks, is this even a real Telkom message? What if I respond and the hackers capture my details? I have used this Telkom number since 2015 and I have never had to call 081-180 before. I stop working. The implications are dire. I inform my colleagues.
George Matlala, our political editor, says: “You need to stop this thing now, chief, given your place in society. These rogues can take all manner of porn and place on your social media platforms with your face seemingly overcome with joy [he laughs]. When you state post-facto that your phone was hacked, nobody is going to believe you.”
The 40-minute countdown in my head is like a thunder-inducing massive headache. I summon everything I know about managing a crisis and apply it to self. I know that panicking will not help. I put out a tweet and I tag @SundayWorld, @ TelkomZA and Bingwa, hoping whatever he learned from his interview he might share, hopefully before my 40 minutes end. Bingwa reverted and many others with helpful general tips. The least said of @TelkomZA the better.
In the chaos, I rush to the Telkom Mobile shop in Sandton where Sharon Ramokgopa tells me to relax because no porting will take place without a one-time pin from my phone. As I was speaking to her, I got this message: “Your port out request has been approved and is ready for port activation.”
I show her the message. Another message came in: “Yello! In order to stay connected, please register your SIM for RICA. Bring your ID and proof of residence to an MTN store or participating retailer. Thank you.” So my number is with MTN now? Yello!? What the hell?
I then say to Ramokgopa: “Listen. If I wake up and this number is ported and there is nothing you then could do because it is with MTN, my banks are hacked… do take note that the consequences will be dire… I am here to make sure you or your colleagues, right now, do everything possible to stop this illegal porting.”
She gave me a reference number and told me, after consulting with colleague Edwin Mapogole, that she sent an e-mail to “PST and Telkom head office” will call me. There is nothing more they could do for me.
Defeated, I drove straight to gym. In the gym parking lot, I wrote a message, with a heavy heart, to friends and family. I screen-grabbed the Telkom porting message and posted on Facebook and Twitter.
I told everybody not to send me eWallets, but was secretly curious who would. I deleted my entire WhatsApp – which had the effect of kicking me out of all WhatsApp groups I was in. I also deleted Twitter, Facebook, removed e-mail from the phone. I couldn’t delete all photos at once – photos of my partner, my kids, my mother, siblings – and therein lay the pain. This porting is a very invasive thing. I deleted anything that has an account number.
My sister, Mmamma, called me on my other number to say: “So this is a serious thing: I called you on your Telkom number and it says ‘the number is not available on the MTN network’.”
I then use my Telkom number to call my Vodacom number and my 079 number had changed to 068-264-7110. People could no longer call me and my number is a strange number I did not recognise. My stomach churned. The helplessness. The expletives under my breath! The pain of deleting pictures of kids knowing they will never be that young again.
At midnight, I throw in the towel – waiting for the worst. How do I sleep, I wonder, when suspecting my account will be hacked this very evening. I told myself I have done everything humanly possible to mitigate the harm, it was now up to God to put a protective shield around my life.
The following morning I went back to the Telkom shop. Calm on the surface, but raging inside, I tell Mapogole: “In spite of all the efforts, the phone is ported. You guys said without a one-time pin, it will not be ported.”
He works on the computer without saying much. He then calls, I presume the “PST” colleagues. He takes my phone and presses certain numbers.
“Look,” he tells me, “your phone was ported to MTN but is in the process of being returned. Certain features are back. Please bear with me.” Minutes later, calls can now come in – except Vodacom calls. Mpho Tsedu, who I know for many years from Seshego, calls to say someone has duped his sister into sending an eWallet to some crooks using his Telkom number.
Mapogole says there’s a routing issue, which is technical but which will be done manually. It will take 24 hours. How was my phone ported without a one-time pin? “This was not done by an individual but by MTN. And your number was originally an MTN number ported to Telkom and so MTN does not require a pin to get back their old number. It could be a system error on their part or whatever.” Truth is he doesn’t know. I went through hell. In the end, I am not any wiser who or why my phone number was ported.
