Nigeria Content Online

On a Thursday night
in early January this year, Pascal Adeniyi had just had dinner and was
getting ready to go to bed when his phone beeped, indicating that he
had received a text message. He picked up the phone and lay back on his
pillow to read the message. Very quickly, he sat up on his bed with a
broad smile on his face as he read the text message for the second
time. The message said that he has been selected to participate in a
contest where he could win N10 million and a car. To participate, he
was asked to reply “yes” to the text.

The message was
from a short code, 555, used by his service provider, Glo, for
promotional purposes. Mr. Adeniyi replied to the message quickly and a
simple question was sent back to him. He answered the first question
and was immediately pulled into in a maze of unending question and
answer texts which lasted five days and cost him a total of N35, 000 on
his contract plan.

Mr. Adeniyi, like
millions of mobile telephone subscribers in Nigeria, has been a victim
of what appears to be a new kind of fraud currently flooding the
largely unregulated but booming short code and mobile telephone
value-added service industry in Nigeria. Mr. Adeniyi feels cheated but
at least, his loss was to a legitimate game, the widely advertised “Glo
Text a Million Season 2 Promo” in which many people have been shown on
television to have won prizes. There are, however, many people losing
money to scores of other ‘not advertised’ scam mobile telephone
value-added services.

10 digit scam

Tochi Ude, for
instance, was defrauded on his MTN phone by a different type of
deceptive value-added service with a number longer than most short
codes. While at work in November last year, he got a text on his phone
from an unusual 10 digit number, 9609908918.

“Hi, I tried to
call you, call me back on this number. +9609908918,” the message read.
He quickly dialled the number and an automated voice answered, asking
him to wait while his service was sorted. He waited.

“I thought it was one of my friends in India, because the numbers looked like an Indian code,” Mr. Ude said.

It turned out to be
an unending Interactive Voice Response (IVR) leading him through a maze
of options and encouraging him to stay longer online. Eventually, his
air time ran out. He spent five minutes on the call but never got to
speak to anyone and could not find out who it was that wanted to reach
him. He hung up and checked his balance. He was billed N500 for the
five minutes he spent with the IVR.

“Each minute cost
N100, but the text never said that,” he said. “The number was strange
and there was no detail about the service provider and the cost. Just
the one sentence in the message.”

Later, he contacted
his three friends in India and all said they didn’t try to reach him at
that time. He got the same text three times that month but never called
it after the first scam. A couple of his friends also got similar
messages in December but in a different form and from a different
number.

Ojoma Ocheja was
scammed by a similar scheme. Last week, she got a text from a 10-digit
number, 6703302973. The message said a secret admirer had sent her a
love song. The text instructed her to call +6703302973 to hear the song
and the identity of the person that sent her the song.

“There was no
information of the cost of the service in the text neither did the
service providers indicate their identity so I thought it was from
MTN,” Ms. Ocheja said. She called the 10-digit number. It turned out to
be an unending IVR. She dropped the call three minutes later, after she
sensed that there was something wrong.

“I didn’t hear both
the song and the identity of the sender,” she said. “Rather, the female
voice at the IVR continuously gave me options luring me on.”

Moneyed scheme

According to
statistics from the National Communication Commission, as at September
2010, there were 75.362 million active GSM lines in Nigeria; all of
them vulnerable to these scams which come in different formats across
networks of various service providers. If 0.1 percent of the active
subscribers spend at least a minute calling any of these services each
day, subscribers will lose N7.536 million daily, N52.753 million in a
week and N1.582 billion in a month. If 1 percent of the active
subscribers use the service at the same rate, they will be defrauded of
N15.82 billion in one month. All victims interviewed by NEXT say they
received the messages more than once and spent more than a minute on
the call.

“Curiosity will keep you on the call,” Mr. Ude said.

The telephone
numbers that were used to defraud Mr. Ude and others in November were
different from those other complainants got in December and yet,
different from the numbers being used in the scheme now. Each of them
is deactivated for the next scam — with new formats — a NEXT
investigation has revealed.

No regulation

Although this
segment of the mobile communication industry spins billions of naira
monthly, mostly for service not rendered, the sector is not regulated.
On April 8, 2010, Ernest Ndukwe, then executive vice chairman of the
NCC, which regulates telecoms and operations in Nigeria, met with his
fellow board members in Abuja for a public inquiry into the proposed
guidelines on short code operations in Nigeria. Eleven months later,
the guidelines are still in a draft form but millions of Nigerians have
been scammed and lost money and there is no way to trace the
perpetuaters of the scam. Basher Gwandu, the executive commissioner,
technical services at NCC, said the commission is still working on
regulating the short code industry. promising to “investigate further
including the Glo number”.

The only form of
regulation for the short code in the telecoms industry, currently, is a
non-legally binding code of conduct document offered by Wireless
Application Service Providers’ of Nigeria (WASPN). WASPN is a voluntary
organization based in Lagos and admits third-party content developers —
most of whom own the short code services and use traditional network
providers — who are willing to give them a platform.

“Not all content
developers are members of WASPN …neither are they obligated to join,”
Eunice Benjamin Ade, the business application manager of WASPN told
NEXT.

Mrs. Ade explained
that it is only members of the association that are bound by its code
of conduct. She disowned the various fraudulent service providers
mentioned in this story saying: “I want to assure you that it is not
emanating from any WASPN member, because they are bound by the code of
conduct,” she said.

As things stand, it
appears that the first line of security and protection from fraudulent
content developers is the service provider. The service provider is the
bridge between the subscriber and the content developer. The service
providers deduct money from the subscribers’ accounts and share this
revenue with the content developers.

However, since
there are no laws or guidelines for the short code industry,
subscribers are at the mercy of their providers’ ability to sniff out,
con artistes. At the moment, service providers don’t appear to be doing
a decent job at this. There are also, of course, promos that are
conducted by the service providers themselves, like the one Mr. Adeniyi
participated in. These come with the traditional “terms and condition”
for its use. However, a lot of its users like Mr. Adeniyi say they feel
cheated.

“I think it is a
fraudulent game,” Iyabo Oyelese, another subscriber said. She argued
that the game is “unreasonably too long” and does not provide
sufficient information about the cost.

Bode Opeseitan, the
spokesperson for Glo could not be reached for comments on these
allegations. He did not answer calls neither did he reply to text
messages from NEXT.

MTN promised to respond to questions concerning the fraud practised via its network, but the reaction never came.

While service providers drag their feet in providing protection to
their subscribers from fraudsters, and the NCC finetunes the short code
guidelines, experts advise subscribers to stay way from these schemes,
and when they feel they want to give it a shot, they should only to put
at stake telephone credit they feel they can afford to lose.