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Aloysius Attah, Onitsha
A young man from Anambra State has developed an app to detect and prevent Internet fraud.
Emmanuel Chinonso Okoye, the cyber security expert from Ifitedunu community, said his app, known as ‘The Middle,’ is capable of curbing various cases of fraud associated with online shopping.
A former medical student at the University of Calabar, he later abandoned the stethoscope and embraced ICT.
With a Bachelor of Science degree from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Okoye has also equipped himself with requisite skills in ICT abroad, from institutions such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Liverpool, and Oxford University, among others.
He described online shops as the easiest means of defrauding people on the internet these days, regretting that the trend had now posed a challenge to genuine online store operators.
He said: “This is mostly very rampant on Instagram where fraudulent people now open online shops to advertise goods, and once they get buyers who make financial transfers to them, they close the account and open another.
But he said with an app like The Middle, one can successfully transfer money to an online shop owner, and he will be unable to withdraw the money until one has clicked the certify button, after the goods have been delivered.
“I built this app to curb cases of fraud, both on the side of the seller, and on the side of the buyer who may get the goods and refuse to certify the payment. In cases like this, the app simply pays the online shop owner after waiting for three days for the buyer to certify the transaction.”
Okoye cited several ugly experiences he has had with shop owners on Instagram, expressing optimism that the app would go a long way to reducing such cases.
He regretted that the proliferation of online stores is a major problem, as they are not checked. He regretted that government has no plans or tools in place to checkmate them, as most online shops have no physical addresses.
“With The Middle, buyers who are buying a product will only have to pay into their escrow account while they receive the product and confirm it is what they paid for. The seller does not get the payment until the buyer confirms that the good is okay. If the reverse is the case, the buyer is requested to return the product within a period of time after which the money is returned to the buyer. More so data will be gathered on these sellers which will enable SON, NAFDAC and any other body mandated with quality assurance to access such people and ensure they are genuine.”
Besides The Middle, Okoye said he has also deployed a platform called Gentzy.xyz. it is a social platform where status of products are reported and verified.
“For instance, people who have used a product or received service from a particular vendor can report whether the product is fake or the service is fraudulent. With that, such cases can be verified by the appropriate bodies and as such the social media miscreants will be fished out.
He noted that there are other things one can do with the app like transfer of funds to someone who might be stranded even in remote places where banks are not accessible.
Okoye also has some words for the law enforcement agents who harass youths on the road: “It is not any youth they see on the road with a laptop or sophisticated device that is into cybercrime. There are genuine ones who are really developing themselves in the ICT field. In the light of that, I want to stress the fact that our youths can do better. We have geniuses, people who can engrave their names in the sand of time in the ICT world” he said.
