Reunert-owned Nashua Mobile is disabling international roaming, calling and call-forwarding functionality on all of its customers’ Sim cards in a bid to prevent fraudsters using stolen Sims to run up bills.

The company says the problem is becoming more prevalent and it is seeing an increase in stolen Sims being used for international calling.

“Cellphone subscribers that fall prey to this scam could be saddled with bills of thousands of rand,” the company says in a statement.

Nashua Mobile has contacted all customers that use roaming services and alerted them to the scam. Any customer that has not used roaming, international calling or forwarding over the last year will automatically have the service cut off and be notified by SMS.

Users can have the services reconnected by contacting Nashua.

Customers that have not used the service in the past 6 months will be asked to contact the company so Nashua can make sure they are not using it.

“Nashua Mobile is working closely with the network operators to put further measures in place to curb this sort of fraud,” says the statement.

It says to prevent this kind of fraud on mobile accounts customers must report lost or stolen Sim cards, deactivate roaming when they are not away, remove call forwarding on their phones and make sure that forwarding hasn’t been activated without their knowledge. — Staff reporter, TechCentral