A recent announcement from the Communications Authority of Kenya says there has been a ‘resurgence’ of wangiri in the country. Victims are reportedly most likely to receive calls that use country codes +51 (Peru) and +64 (New Zealand).
However, there is good reason to doubt the competence of the Kenyan regulator, which also made this improbable claim about the Peruvian and New Zealand phone numbers used for wangiri.
These telephone numbers are illegally purchased by these scammers from the Dark Web, which is a hidden part of the Internet, known for buying and selling illegal goods and services.
A likelier explanation is that the scammers are spoofing numbers they never bothered to purchase. This gives them the freedom to work around simple number-based filters by varying the apparent origin of their calls without incurring unnecessary cost. If they did purchase the numbers, there is no reason to believe the purchase was illegal. Any illegality relates to how the numbers have been used, not how they were acquired.
Regulators and their sycophants often pretend that telecoms fraudsters are like the high-tech cybercriminals portrayed in Mission Impossible, Mr. Robot and other Hollywood movies and television shows. The truth is that most criminals succeed because the authorities are too indolent to make the slightest effort to stop them. As this press release shows, the public needs independent fact-checkers to protect them when regulators raise ‘awareness’ of crime.
