Telephone number masking: Reps to probe telecom coys 

The House resolution followed a motion sponsored by Hon. Saheed Akinade -Fijabi entitled, “need to investigate revenue losses and cybersecurity threats caused by telephone number masking by telecommunication service providers”.

In his motion, the lawmaker noted that “telephone number masking via Voice-Over-IP Technology makes it possible for fraudsters, criminals and terrorists from anywhere in the world to reach out and talk to anyone on their phone”.

According to him, ” those shady characters can easily hide their identities or pretend to be someone else because many consumer service companies and government agencies use phone calls as a way to confirm identities and other verifications and this poses a major threat to cybersecurity”.

He added that the porous nature of the system has led to numerous scams against consumers and financial institutions, as well as allowed hackers to sometimes abuse the password recovery features of online services and in the process, wrestle control of a victim’s accounts.

Speaking further, he said that “with Voice-Over-IP Technology, international calls made from anywhere in the world are routed and can be shown as local calls, thereby displaying local Global System of Mobile Communications (GSM) numbers by telecommunications service providers in Nigeria”.

The lawmaker also expressed concerned that ” the termination fee for those international inbound calls routed as local calls are also tariffed as local calls by telecommunications service providers in Nigeria, thereby decreasing the accruable revenues remitted to the federal government.

“In the absence of an effective monitoring mechanism to checkmate it, the trend poses a threat to our national security and hinders remittance of accruable revenues from the telecommunications industry,” he maintained.

A voice vote called by the Speaker, Honourable Yakubu Dogara on the motion was supported by a majority of members in the chamber.