The Uganda Police Force has cautioned the public against the increasing number of SIM swap fraudsters, especially during the festive season.

Police spokesperson SCP Fred Enanga, while addressing a press brief at the police headquarters in Naguru on December 11, 2023, said that scammers who are very good at social engineering skills are defrauding the public through SIM swapping.

“Scammers using social media engineering skills attack subscribers by either spoofing caller identities through the use of comprised social networking applications or illegal and unscrupulous SIM card swapping,” Enanga said.

He narrated that the hackers pull a phone number from one phone, then image it to make it look like it’s that same person calling, then tell you to wait so that they call you on another line and claim that the owner of the phone is in a hospital or jail and a certain amount of money is required to bail him out, then they rob you clean.

Enaga added that the Criminal Intelligence Department (CID) has already launched investigations into SIM card and money extortion scams. However, he advised the public to stay alert and vigilant by taking some counter-precautionary measures.

“Avoid panicking; it is not necessary because you end up sending funds or information to the wrong caller, and don’t rashly send funds without verifying the side incident,” Enanga added.

He said that the public should refrain from sharing personal and financial information online. He also advised that one should cross-check and find out if their phone number has other parallel numbers associated with their NIN.

SIM Swap fraud is a type of fraud that centers around taking over a victim’s phone number and using the same to carry out mobile banking transactions or to receive One Time Passwords (OTPs) that authenticate other forms of digital transactions (internet and mobile banking).This feature is common where one has lost their phone or where their SIM card is dropped from the mobile phone operator network due to a line replacement by a fraudster.Fraudsters contact the victim’s mobile phone operator and use social engineering techniques to convince the telephone company to provide a new SIM for the victim’s phone number to the fraudster.