Vodafone’s African subsidiary Vodacom Group is employing social media to cut the number of scam SMSes sent over its network.
The operator has embedded reporting functions on its official Facebook page to enable subscribers to report new scams and forward details of existing cons if they are also hit by it. The reporting function also aims to inform customers how prevalent scams are, which numbers sent the messages, and what action is being taken to tackle the messages.
“This facility helps raise awareness of the different types of SMS scams as well as putting a stop to them,” explains Richard Boorman, head of corporate affairs at Vodacom. He says the new tool solves “an age old problem,” and closes “the window that scammers had to fleece unsuspecting people before the warning could be raised.”