Wherever there’s a market, there are counterfeiters and thieves looking to make an unfair buck out of it. Even SIM cards are vulnerable to fraud, which is why telecoms are looking into new ways to put a damper on illegal SIM trade.
Saudi Call has teamed up with a French company, which wishes to go undisclosed, in order to determine if fingerprint records can help combat the illegal resale of SIM cards. Currently, SIM card owners are identified through registering the lines with the owner’s national ID number or residency number, but the company is looking into the possibility of using fingerprint identification instead.
This would require computerized coordination between private and public entities to keep track of who owns what mobile lines, and would require those purchasing new SIM cards to be fingerprinted upon receipt. This may prove to be an annoyance to customers, but it raises a question of whether security or convenience is more important.
With that said, it’s important to note that SIM card crime is no small matter. People purchasing SIM cards under fraudulent names, or purchasing used ones, not only cheat the companies providing them, but often use them to make harassing calls or commit other equally unkind acts, with no name of their own linked to it. As such, companies have been attempting to improve their methods of identification, and the fingerprinting method is the latest in their attempts to do so.
Unfortunately, crime cannot be stopped just by telling people “Hey, what you’re doing is wrong, knock it off.” That’s why people are forced to take unusual, perhaps even drastic, measures in order to combat it. While I wouldn’t describe fingerprinting people who purchase SIM cards as any sort of paranoid madness, it nicely demonstrates the lengths that must be taken to fight fraud.
Perhaps there are other methods out there that would work better, and fingerprinting is an exercise in futility, but the telecom companies are getting really tired of their SIM cards being resold or bought under fake names, so this is their counterattack.
Edited by Ashley Caputo