We Care About You, the Cameroonian app to fight online scams 🛡️

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With the rise of online services in Cameroon, the growing number of scams is becoming increasingly worrying. One particularly hard-hit sector is online sales of bus tickets. To tackle this fraud, a Cameroonian platform has been set up to check the numbers available online.

A proliferation of online scams 🚨

When a user wants to buy a ticket online, their initial reflex is often to do a Google search. However, not all travel agencies have a website, which can affect their Google ranking. As a result, Google uses results from Facebook pages, opening the door to fraudulent activities.

The scammers use images from official agency pages, but provide false contact numbers. The victim, thinking he’s contacting the legitimate agency, contacts the scammers. The scammers then pretend to be ticket agents, helping the customer through the manual ticket-buying process. During this interaction, the scammers request various information from the user, such as name, ID number and telephone number. The scammers then ask the user to proceed with payment by making a transfer to an MTN Money or Orange Money account, the details of which they provide over the phone. But the scam doesn’t stop there.

After payment, the scammer asks the victim to provide proof of the transfer, and the victim, often in a hurry, sends a screenshot of the payment SMS received. Unfortunately, the victim doesn’t always think to hide the balance on the screenshot. Using this information, the scammer generates a code to empty the victim’s account. In a hurry, the victim enters the code, unaware of the fraud. Once the funds have been recovered, the scammer cuts off communication and disappears.

This method is not new. LOHCE, a company specializing in online bus ticket sales, already discussed it in a 2019 article, which you can read by clicking here.

We Care About You, the solution from LOHCE ✅

The growing threat of scams underlines the importance of having tools to inform a wide public and prevent such scams. As a key player in online sales, the LOHCE platform has developed a solution to counter these scams. This solution takes the form of a simple, effective tool called We Care About You, designed to combat telephone number theft.

We Care about You sur le Web

Available on the web (by clicking here) and on Android (by clicking here) (and soon on iOS), the platform lets you check whether a phone number belongs to a legitimate travel agency. The application is user-friendly and straightforward. A simple field is used to enter the phone number. By pressing the « Verify number » button, the user will quickly know whether it is legitimate or not.

The numbers verified are those of the platform’s regular partners. LOHCE made the conscious choice to separate « We Care About You » from its bus ticket booking application. As a public utility, it was essential not to require users to download the entire booking application for a simple agency number check.

LOHCE is above all driven by user feedback. Don’t hesitate to download the application, test it and share it with others. If you have any comments, you can contact them directly via the app or via their social networks.

Have you ever been a victim of this type of scam? Or perhaps someone close to you has? Share your experiences in the comments. And don’t forget to share this information.

Note: This article is purely informative and does not constitute a commercial promotion. All information provided is based on knowledge available up to the date of writing (October 2023). For more details on We Care About You, please visit their official website.