Paris-based global mobile anti-fraud outfit Evina says the top five African and Middle Eastern countries where mobile fraud is most prevalent are Cameroon, Kenya, South Africa, Jordan and Oman.

The percentage of mobile-based billing transactions in each country that have been identified as suspect by Evina’s network of fraud sensors are 51%, 30%, 20%, 18% and 10%, respectively.

“Africa’s youthful population that is mostly unbanked and using some 900 million mobile money accounts is particularly hard-hit by professional cyber criminals from around the world, who together cost Africa some US$ 4-billion every year,” says David Lotfi, Evina CEO.

The company adds that Direct Carrier Billing (DCB), where users are billed for purchases directly on their phone bills, is being impacted by two primary forms of mobile fraud: clickjacking where a fraudster intercepts a legitimate click and unknowingly directs the user to a website where sensitive financial and other details can be stolen, and malicious apps that seek to do the same.

While embedding malware in malicious apps can be a more refined fraudulent technique, clickjacking is a very basic type of fraud that has been around for at least five years and mostly eradicated in large parts of the mobile world, Evina continues.

"Fraud is a feasible obstacle to overcome and there really is no excuse for the fact that one in three mobile subscriptions attempts in South Africa, for example, is fraudulent. Evina communicated at AfricaCom the fact that the fraudsters who continue - in 2020 - to steal Africa’s wealth can be beaten with the right tools that we already use to protect millions of mobile transactions every day," says Lotfi.

According to Evina, it protects up to 90% of mobile transaction activities in Ivory Coast, Morocco, Cameroon and Senegal. It also secures traffic in African countries such as Mali, Ghana, Congo, Kenya, Botswana, Angola and many countries in the Middle East including Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya.

The company also has a footprint in South Africa.

Fraudsters are impacting the long-term sustainability of the digital advertising and mobile payments industries, in particular, by perpetrating thousands of mobile-based fraud attempts daily.

Evina recently participated at AfricaCom, in partnership with Business France, to explain how its DCBprotect flagship offering can help mobile carriers, mobile aggregators, mobile advertisers and others recover the billions lost annually to digital monetisation fraud.