A recycled phone number can send your bank codes to a stranger. The NCC wants more companies to check

If your old phone number gets recycled and handed to a stranger, that stranger could end up receiving the codes your bank sends you. The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) says banks can already check whether a recycled phone number has changed hands, and it now wants other companies that use phone numbers to do the same.

The NCC is working with the Central Bank of Nigeria to widen a system that flags recycled and suspicious phone numbers beyond banks. You can protect yourself now by keeping your lines active and updating your bank when you change numbers.

Speaking in Lagos on Oct. 20, Aminu Maida said the NCC is working with the Central Bank of Nigeria to extend the system to other sectors that use phone numbers to identify customers. “A phone number has also become part of our digital identity,” he said.

The system, TIRMS, lets organisations check whether a number has been recycled, swapped or flagged for fraud before they trust it. Under an agreement the NCC and the CBN signed on April 20, banks and other financial firms can already run that check, the NCC says. The next step would bring in more of the places that send you codes or log you in by phone number. The NCC has not given a date or named the sectors.

The real shift: your phone number has quietly become a key to your money, your pension and your online accounts. Until now, a recycled number could carry that key to a stranger. This system is meant to make companies notice when the person behind a number has changed.

When you stop using a line, the network eventually takes the number back and can give it to someone new. If your bank, betting account, pension portal or shopping app still has that old number on file, the new owner may start getting your one-time codes and password reset texts. That is one of the routes fraudsters use to take over accounts, alongside SIM swap fraud.

Here is how a number gets recycled. The NCC set out the timeline, and one proposed change, in its consultation paper on TIRMS in February. The first two points and line parking are current rules. The 14-day notice is still a proposal, and the NCC has not announced final rules:

If your network fails you on a complaint, the NCC says to get a complaint reference number from the network first, then escalate to the NCC on its toll-free line, 622. We explain when you are owed compensation in our guide to network outages in Nigeria.

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