Here is why your airtime may be running faster than usual and how to stop it. Unknowingly subscribed to services by mobile phone users
Exploiting mobile phone consumers by licensed third-party providers
Third-party monitoring and regulation are recommended for telcos.
Buying airtime for activity and discovering within a short amount of time that the airtime is all gone is perhaps one of the most agonizing situations for everyone.
Phone calls, text messaging, and data are just a few of the uses for airtime.
While it is one of the most widely utilized network services, the rapidity with which airtime is consumed may be taxing.
What you may not realize is that unintentionally, subscriptions to services may be the leading cause of your phone credit expiring soon after purchase.
Luv FM held a poll, which was seen by many mobile phone consumers are being abused by licensed third-party providers of various telecommunication services, according to GhanaWeb.
The study analyzed a sample of 100 mobile phone users and discovered that mobile phone users are unintentionally subscribing to 95 services.
The problem of costs from these subscriptions, which range from 19 pesewas to 85 pesewas, was even more telling.
Games24Pro, JobsDeego Plus, Mscorer, RD Sexy Pink, and MusicApp are the names of five of the 95 subscriptions.
MScorer had 20 users on their phones, RD Sexy Pink and JobsDeego Plus had 12 users, while Games24Pro and MusicApp had 12 and 13 users on their phones, respectively.
Dr. Kenneth Ashigbey, the Chamber of Telecommunications’ Chief Executive Officer, addressed why this has happened to Kwasi Debrah of Luv FM.
“Some of the third parties who have been granted licenses by the NCA do not follow the rules, so what the networks are attempting to do today is make sure that for every service you use, you are given the choice to sign in, and so there are some policies that we are trying to enforce,” he explained.
Ghana Telecom’s Dr. Kester Aphetsi Quist
These subscription messages are frequently discreet and occur at the conclusion of texts or phone conversations, according to University, who was a victim himself.
“These can be seen at the end of phone calls and occasionally in text messages. Normally, when individuals make phone calls, they are aware that a pop-up appears. So people click on these pop-ups without realizing that they are being led to subscribe to things they did not mean to subscribe to, and some of these things have resulted in money being deducted from their accounts.
“The majority of subscribers do not subscribe as frequently as other subscription services. For instance, if you want people to subscribe to a certain service, you must first promote it, and then they must dial a short number and follow the prompts to have access to that service.
“However, as soon as you end the calls, the pop-ups appear, and sometimes there is no message connected; it’s just a message that arrives with an ok, and some of them don’t even take you to another, and by the time you realize it, you’ve subscribed to it,” he stated.
“The telco services need to monitor their network and be sure that the people they give access to for certain services don’t abuse it by using these things to extort monies from their subscribers because if monies are being deducted from a subscriber’s account,” Dr. Quist said, “because if monies are being deducted from a subscriber’s account.”
And they realize that if they utilize these telecommunication services, their credits would run out, therefore they will switch to another provider since customers are dealing with a lot of mobile money fraudsters and other issues.”
He also advised consumers to avoid clicking on pop-up notifications on their phones and instead use the power button.
To counteract this, mobile phone customers can dial * 175# for MTN, * 100# for AirtelTigo, and *463# for Vodafone to unsubscribe and cancel their looting subscriptions on the various networks.
