You will soon be able to check and see any phone number registered under your ID and name. The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has advertised a tender to procure a software system for ID-to-SIM card verification system to enable this.
According to the tender document, the system should be able to return results from any telco network in a single SMS.
Currently, Kenyans can only check the numbers registered with their details on the same network they use. For instance, a Safaricom user cannot get registration results from Airtel and vice versa.
With the new system, a user will send a message and aggregated results from all the networks will be sent back, showing the phone numbers registered with Airtel, Telkom, Safaricom and Jamii Telcom, as well as other Mobile Virtual Network Providers.
The tender advertisement comes in the wake of the government requiring internet provider Starlink users to register their details and present themselves in person for verification, as part of measures to tighten cybersecurity.
Some of the requirements for the new system are:
- Capability for Integration with all Mobile and Mobile Virtual Network Operators
- ID-to-SIM Checker: Capability for users to send via SMS their identification document number
- Capability to query all Mobile Network Operators and Mobile Virtual Network Operators databases
- Capability to return a single SMS with all queried information numbers registered using that particular identification document number
- Capability to group the results per Network Operators
- Capability to mask portion of the queried data in line with the data protection law.
Apart from mobile fraud and identity theft, stolen IDs are used by criminals to mask their tracks and throw sleuths in the wrong direction ending up hunting for innocent people.
Once a user finds out their ID details are registered with an unfamiliar number, they will be able to ask the mobile operator to correct the anomaly.
While KYC verification has been in effect for some years now, identity theft continues to be a challenge as unscrupulous agents still register people even when they look nothing like the person in the ID. Some do this for criminal collaboration, while others are just careless.
There is no documented case so far where someone has taken telcos to court over fraudulent registration using illegally acquired ID documents.
