Cybercriminals are finding more and more ways to reach their victims. In this case, these scammers have brought out of oblivion a type of fraud that seemed to have disappeared, but that is returning to occupy the complaints of the police cybercrime department, sim card scam.
A crime that affected even the creator of TwitterJack Dorsey, when a scammer was able to hack into his phone and access Twitter’s text-to-tweet service, which allowed users to upload posts without logging into the app.
The danger to the victims is of such magnitude that the FBI assures that the Americans lost 68 million dollars through this scam in 2021. Some data that show that this type of fraud is experiencing a huge boom, since the figure is reduced to 12 million in three years, between 2018 and 2020.
How does the SIM card scam work?
SIM swapping, as it is even known as a type of cybercrime, consists of duplicating SIM cards. The purpose of this practice is being able to receive the SMS with the confirmation code that the banks send to the mobile of its users when they carry out an operation, as explained by the OCU.
First of all, the cybercriminal has to get user data from the phone company. To do this, they use malware, a type of computer virus, or through social engineering techniques.
However, in many cases it is not even necessary for the scammer to obtain the data from the victim. After so many company security breaches over the years, a lot of customer information is distributed on the Dark Web, so cybercriminals just have to buy it.
Once they have the victim’s details, the scammer calls the phone company pretending to be the victim. Using the information you have acquired, you will inform the company that the SIM card has been damaged or lostand will request a new one.
Once they have the card and the data, they only have to access the victim’s applications. This is where the SIM becomes necessary. When they try to withdraw money from the banking apps, the entities themselves will send an SMS to the victim’s phone to confirm the operation, only in this case, the message will be received by the scammer. You will only have to enter that code in the application for the operation to be approved.
How can I protect myself from SIM card scam?
First of all, it should be noted that companies will never call their customers to request information such as PIN numbers or passwords. Companies are aware of the danger users run when disclosing this type of information, so they frequently warn them that they never ask for such data.
In this sense, to protect yourself from this type of threat, you must take a series of measures:
– Never provide information to persons whose identity has not been verified.
– When you receive a call requesting certain data, it is best to hang up and call the company directly to verify the need to do so.
– Avoid publishing data on the internet such as phone number or address.
– Use different passwords for the different accounts and change them often.
– Do not save passwords in the text applications of the device itself.
– Do not announce information about financial assets, including the ownership or investment of cryptocurrencies, on forums and social media websites.
What can I do if I have been a victim of the SIM card scam?
The first step is call the bank to warn you not to authorize any further movement on the account. In this way, the cybercriminal will not be able to steal more money.
Second, the victim must go to the National Police and file a complaint explaining in detail what happened.
Later, it will be time to return to the bank to request that all charges be refunded consider. For this, it will be necessary to attach the complaint.
As explained from the OCU, the Law establishes that, in those cases in which an unauthorized payment operation is executed, the bank is obliged to return the amount of the transaction instantly.
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