For a while now, Kenyans have questioned the need to give out too much of their private information while using the M-Pesa mobile money services, now, Safaricom is addressing the issue by introducing a feature blocking customer contact details when making payments through Lipa na M-Pesa.
According to BD Africa, the telco will now only display the first and last few digits of a phone number, blocking the middle and effectively hiding the contact of the customer when they pay for products and services.
At present, when you pay for goods and services, your contact information (phone number and full names) is left with thousands of merchants. This information can then be used for malice like a previously identified scheme where thousands of Kenyans were registered to political parties without their knowledge or make them targets of advertisements and spam.
“The plan is to hide your number where it will display say the first two or three numbers and the last ones and block out the middle, just the way banks do,” a Safaricom employee told journalists.
The move to curb the use of clients’ data by third parties comes amid revelations that more than a fifth of Kenyan companies shared customers’ financial and personal information without consent.
