Last Night’s Talk Shows on mobile phone line fraud

Talk shows explored a mobile phone crisis that emerged last week, zeroing in on the high-profile “Target Case,” in which a student was implicated in a drug trafficking scheme linked to a phone line registered in his name without his knowledge. Shortly after, several citizens revealed that they had found unauthorized lines registered in their names.

Further coverage highlighted the outage of the National Telecom Regulatory Authority’s My NTRA app, which lets users check all lines registered under their name. TV host Ramy Radwan expressed his surprise at the outage on Thursday’s episode of From Maspero, expressing hope that the service would return online soon. (watch, runtime: 2:31).

A solution is coming soon: Once the National Telecom Regulatory Authority rolls out facial recognition for anyone buying a new line starting a month from now, the issue of phone lines registered under citizens’ names without their knowledge will be eliminated, House Communications Committee Chairman Ahmed Badawi told Ahmed Mousa on Ala Masouleety (watch, runtime: 4:51). He added that the regulator instructed telecom companies to update user data to ensure the problem is fully resolved.

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