Are your SMSes going to the wrong person on either MTN or Airtel?

You trust your SMSes to go where you intended them to, don’t you? Until crosslining happens. Then your text, however confidential, gets sent to a random number, putting your business out there.

So far I have talked to two people, a Mr Mubanga and Mr Mike, who sent texts to my work colleague unknowingly after they sent SMSes to other people they intended them to go to.

Mr Mubanga said this is not the first time his messages have gone to another random number, with the person texting him back to tell him that he sent his message to the wrong number. He checked his logs on his phone and it showed he had sent his SMS to the person he intended it to.

Mr Mike said the same, he sent an SMS to a person whose number he had saved in his phone, but the person didn’t get the text. He then got a message from an anonymous number telling him he had sent his message to the wrong number, even though Mr Mike’s logs showed he had sent it to the correct line.

Privacy and security are being compromised here, which will affect brand loyalty further if this crosslining isn’t sorted out so I tried to find out more but calls to both Airtel and MTN PR departments went unanswered or rejected by the time of print. If you have experienced similar problems please let us know. Right now the case stands at 2 complaints. More contributions will be welcome while we wait for responses from our mobile network operators.

Image Credits: Scrap Book of Truth