In the Emirates, residents are permitted to use VPN but its misuse could result in imprisonment and a fine of up to Dh2 million
UAE resident Noor Ahmed has been losing over Dh3 daily from his post-paid mobile account for many weeks. He was unaware of it until he got a message from his telecom service provider that he had reached the credit limit.
“I was surprised to see the message from a local telecom service provider because I had not utilised much of my available balance. I use a pre-paid mobile balance only to pay for parking through SMS. When I checked with the telecom service provider’s customer services executives at one of the hypermarkets, I found out that I was being charged by the VPN that I had installed. Therefore, I immediately uninstalled it,” he said.
Once the Virtual Private Network (VPN) app was uninstalled, Ahmed, who lost over Dh200 in one month alone, stopped losing his balance. Ahmed was among many who had a similar experience.
Another long-time resident, Masoom Fatima, who had also installed a VPN app for audio-video communications with her friends and family, lost all her mobile balance within a couple of days after she recharged.
“Whenever I recharged my mobile account, the funds just vanished within a day or two. It happened to me multiple times. When a friend of mine told me to remove the VPN app, I stopped losing the credit,” said Fatima.
