SIM Card Swap Scam: How It Works
There is a scary scam that’s happening worldwide these days. This criminal activity allows crooks to remotely access victims’ bank acoounts throught their smartphones!
The scam is known as the SIM Card Swap and it was just reported by the Irish publication The Journal. How does it work?
Watch the video below to see the SIM Card Swap scam exposed:
The scam enables criminals to access people’s bank accounts by taking over the control of their phones while they are locked. The victims are typically those who have online banking apps on their smartphones, which fraudsters can access by using the user’s SIM card IP Address.
A man who got hit by this scam described how the signal on his phone was lost for about two hours. After that, when the signal was back, a quick loan approval of $8,000 had been applied for on the AIB Online function that he used.
This scary scam uses a common flaw in mobile phone networks which allow fraudsters to swap or “port” a phone number to a new SIM card or phone network. Criminals find the information about their targets on social media platforms and from “phishing” emails, which impersonate legitimate organizations.
The crooks also use social engineering techniques to get in touch with their victims, usually impersonating trusted organizations such as energy suppliers, financial institutions and the police to request personal information.
The fraudsters then contact phone networks to ask for the victim’s phone number to be swapped to a new SIM card which they control.
The personal information they obtain is then used to convince phone networks that the scammers are actually their victims. With porting phone numbers nowadays, it used to take a month or so before you get your number. Now? They’ve got a service level agreement of about one day.
How To Report Scams
Make your family and friends aware of the SIM Card Swap Scam by sharing it on social media using the buttons provided. You can also officially report any kind of scammers to the Federal Trade Commission using the link below:
How To Protect Yourself More
If you want to be the first to find out the most notorious scams every week, feel free to subscribe to the Scam Detector newsletter here. You’ll receive periodical emails and we promise not to spam. Last but not least, use the Comments section below to expose other scammers.
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