Ekeoma Atuonwu, an Abuja-based journalist, was leisurely using her mobile phone on Monday evening when text message notifications began to go off.
Two messages from ‘OpayNG’ came at 6:21 pm and 6:22 pm, then three more from ‘Opay’ followed between 7:04 pm and 7:06 pm.
Contained in the messages were one-time passwords. Each one, different from the next.
The wording of the texts was similar: ‘DO NOT DISCLOSE. To reset Password to your M760 device, pls [sic] use OTP ******. No staff of Opay will ask for this code. ExCUMtvWXvg.’
After these unexpected messages came, she received calls from an unfamiliar number.
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“I did not answer the calls, as I suspected it was linked to the messages,” Atuonwu told FIJ. “They stopped calling, and I did not think too much of it until it occurred to me that I did not have any Opay account and never opened one.”
FIJ ran the number through Truecaller, an application that logs caller data. On the app, the number was registered as ‘Gil Appeals Opay’.
Atuonwu told FIJ that she did not remember opening an OPay account and did not know how the caller got her phone number, but when she ran her number through a bank app, she found that it was registered on OPay as ‘Eke Omah’.
She was worried that someone might have somehow accessed her data to then send her OTPs in a bid to gain entry to the account that was created using her phone number.
On Tuesday, FIJ called Adeyemi Adekunle, OPay’s Public Relations Officer (PRO), but he requested a text message. He had not responded to FIJ’s message at press time.
The post Fraudulent Wolves in OPay’s Clothing Send OTPs to Abuja Journalist Who Never Opened OPay Account appeared first on Foundation For Investigative Journalism.