Court rules recycling inactive mobile numbers violates privacy: Why Your SIM Card is Now a Constitutional Right

For Erastus Ngura Odhiambo, serving a 20-year sentence meant losing his physical freedom, but he did not expect to lose his digital identity too. While behind bars at Kamiti, his long-held Safaricom number was deactivated and sold to a stranger. Suddenly, a random person had access to his bank notifications, KRA alerts, and private family messages. Odhiambo sued from his cell, and the resulting High Court ruling has just shifted the ground for every mobile user in Kenya.

Justice Lawrence Mugambi, delivering the judgment at the Milimani High Court on March 19, 2026, ruled that a registered mobile number is more than a communication tool. It is a protected digital identifier. Under Article 31 (c) and (d) of the Constitution, your phone number is now legally anchored to your right to privacy. The court effectively killed the arbitrary 90-day rule, where telcos could simply snatch back a dormant line and flip it to the next customer in line.

The judgment highlights a terrifying reality of the modern age. When a telco recycles a SIM card, they are not just selling digits. They are often handing over the keys to a person’s financial and social ghost. In an economy that runs on M-Pesa and mobile banking, deactivation can lead to total identity exposure. The court found that reassigning these numbers without extreme safeguards creates a massive vacuum for fraud and privacy breaches.

By ordering the state to protect the number itself, the judge ensured that when a prisoner finally walks free, they still have a digital life to return to. They won't emerge from a cell only to find their bank accounts, KRA records, and personal reputations have been sold to a stranger for the price of a fifty-shilling SIM card.

The Office of the Attorney General now has until September 19, 2026, to implement a new framework. The court has demanded that reassignment only happens under strict conditions. Telcos will now need informed and verifiable consent before taking a number away. If an owner cannot be reached, the company must issue a public notice and follow a documented verification process to prove the person has actually relinquished the line.

Mobile network operators like Safaricom, Airtel, and Telkom now bear the burden of ensuring that digital residue is scrubbed before a number changes hands. It turns the telcos from simple service providers into constitutional guardians of our data.

This case proves that your digital identity is now considered a part of your personhood. Whether you are in a boardroom, traveling abroad, or in a prison cell, your ten digits are officially off-limits to the highest bidder.

Now here me out:

How to Reclaim or Protect Your Number The ruling creates a path for reclamation, but your immediate options depend on timing:

Recreate it: If your line was deactivated recently, you can try to reclaim it before it hits the market. On Safaricom, dialing 1002# from another active line allows you to check if your old number is still available for "re-registration."

The Legal Freeze: Because the court ruled that deactivation without consent is a violation of Article 31, you now have the standing to formally petition your provider to return a recycled number if they failed to follow the new "verifiable consent" standard.

Daima Service: For those traveling or in school, Safaricom’s Daima service remains the most practical insurance. A small fee keeps the line active for up to two years without a single top-up.

How To Do a self Digital Audit Until the September deadline forces telcos to automate these protections, you should manually scrub your trail:

Switch Your 2FA: Move your security codes from SMS to an app like Google Authenticator. If someone gets your old number, they should not get your passwords.

Update Your Bank: Do not rely on the telco to clear your data. Manually update your primary contact at your bank and on the iTax portal to ensure notifications do not go to a stranger.

The WhatsApp Migration: Use the "Change Number" feature in WhatsApp settings. This moves your data to a new line and notifies your groups, preventing a new owner from inheriting your chats.

This might not mean much to you but you know it could help your parents or other people in your life who are not as tech savvy. Here if you have any questions.