By Ayanda Mhlongo and Bongani Mthembu
It's time for South African cellphone users to be ultra-cautious. Not only have the country's criminals found a novel way to steal airtime, they are also flooding the market with pirate phones which are likely to be blacklisted at any time.
Thousands of South Africans could find their cellphone bills far exceeding their monthly budgets.
A special police unit has discovered that hi-tech criminal syndicates are now able to clone sim cards, enabling them to use the airtime of other phones.
The procedure is similar to a sim-swap, which is normally done by networks, and all the cloners need is to know the cellphone number to be cloned.
Police have warned people on contract to thoroughly check their itemised billing as cellphone users with contracts are preferred targets, as opposed to those using pay-as-you go airtime.
Police spokesperson Thembeka Luthuli said that people who were on contracts needed to take extra care as users often failed to pick up that someone else had used their airtime, as it would reflect the same cellphone number being used.
Users observant enough to discover this had happened could then have a problem proving they did not dial that number.
Not only are criminals cloning sim cards, they are also cloning IMEI or serial numbers. A unit known as the Global System for Mobile Communications Unit (GSM), based in Durban Central Police Station, has recently recovered hundreds of cloned phones.
The phones are cloned before being sold in cellphone stores. Luthuli said the phones were cloned or twinned so that they could operate on the networks.
"They are illegal and for them to be operable, they need to have a serial number, so criminals will copy the serial number of a legal phone," she said.
The cloning process uses an electronic device which plugs directly into the phone's memory; criminals can then reconfigure the electronic identity of the phone, thus creating a clone.
Luthuli said that the latest model cellphones were being cloned and shared the same IMEI or serial numbers with thousands of other phones around the country.
She said, however, that if one of the cellphones using the same serial number were blocked by a network, then all of the other phones would immediately be blocked.
The GSM Unit has recovered software that can unblock cellphones so that the phone cannot be traced.
Luthuli advised people who had the latest model cellphones and those who intended buying phones to rub their finger over the sticker inside the phone bearing the serial number.
"If the ink comes off, that means the phone is a clone," she said.
Phones likely to be cloned are: Nokia 3310, 5110, 6110, 1100, 2100, 6600, 7210, 6610, 8310, 6510 and Motorola V50, V60, V70 and V65.
Meanwhile, in a separate development, more than 30 000 pirate cellphones are being smuggled into the country from Far East and Middle East countries every week.
This has been revealed by Durban police, the South African Receiver of Revenue and the department of customs and excise, who have recovered thousands of these phones since the beginning of the year.
The syndicate is massive and it is believed that four major importers in Durban, about seven in Johannesburg, and at least two in Cape Town, are involved.
Durban's GSM Unit has recovered more than 700 pirate phones in raids on shops in Durban and Johannesburg over the past three weeks.
The customs and excise department has also recovered thousands since the beginning of the year.
Some of the phones have twinned IMEI serial numbers, which put people who buy them at risk of having their cellphones blacklisted without their knowledge.
Customs and Excise's Sechaba Nkosi told The Independent on Saturday the department had become aware of the syndicate earlier this year.
Thousand of phones had made their way into the country through ports or across land borders and been sold to the public.
Nkosi said some cellphones had been found hidden in TV sets.
"The syndicate involves even big importing firms. Some companies have been penalised and warned to stop, and if they are caught again, legal action will be taken against them," he said.
He said no one had yet been arrested as the investigation was still at an early stage.
"A lot has been done, but there are indications that the syndicate is huge and we are being careful in everything we are doing," he said.