According to Shop Mag, 28billion pounds are lost annually to counterfeit products.

According to Daily Finance, the worst affected industries are footwear with a value of 99.8million USD followed by Consumer Electronics coming in at 31.8million USD value.

Many of these electronics are Television sets, radios and sound systems and even the prestigious home theatres that are coveted by many who are out looking for a good appliance to use in their homes.

The other biggest culprit is mobile phones.

The Kenyan government has been losing KES3bilion every year due to evasion of tax by bringin in counterfeits to the country. Additionally, counterfeits cost giant phone maker and distributor Nokia-Kenya USD 361million in their last financial year. Read more »

Global handsets maker advises users not to respond to dubious messages.

World’s leading handsets maker, Nokia, has warned mobile phone users over the re-emergence of a scam suggesting that people have won money or mobile phones, which in reality, is an attempt to get private information from people who reply to the messages.

The hoaxers previously used to send to the dubious information to email addresses telling people they had won a Nokia device. This scam has now moved on and is being sent out to mobiles phones via SMS, with the message suggesting people have won a free Nokia, and just need to provide their bank details to claim the free phone.

“We have been receiving a number of reports recently that scam artists are sending out hoax SMS and emails, purportedly from Nokia, that offer some sort of money if one were to respond in a similar way that lotteries are run. We would like to clarify that, those messages are not coming from Nokia and that we do not do money lotteries. We are asking people to beware and know that this ‘lottery’ is a scam,” said Kenneth Oyolla, Nokia, General Manager, East and Southern Africa.

“Our advice is that if you do receive something dubious like this, DO NOT reply to these messages or pass them on. The thing to do is to delete the message without responding. You might also consider contacting the Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) to report such hoax messages,” said Mr Oyolla.

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