T-Mobile subscriber narrowly escapes SIM swap fraud

T-Mobile subscriber narrowly escapes SIM swap fraud،

Last month we told you about a woman who had $17,000 stolen from her bank account as a victim of a SIM swap. In this case, a thief went to a Verizon store and gave the representative the woman's phone number as his, asked for a new SIM card and when he received it, he inserted into the SIM slot of her phone, thereby cutting off the woman's service. . This allowed the thief to snoop through the victim's apps, change passwords at will, and withdraw $17,000 from their bank account.

SIM swaps often require a shady representative to get involved in the crime

Something similar happened to a T-Mobile customer who posted his story on Reddit and maybe by reading it you'll know what to do if this happens to you. THE T Mobile The subscriber was at home when he noticed that he had received an email from the operator informing him that a change of SIM card on his number had been made even though he had never requested a change of SIM card. He quickly discovered that his iPhone's ESIM was no longer active.

If you receive a text message like this but haven't requested a new SIM card, call your carrier immediately.

As time was running out, the man quickly called T Mobile even though it took an hour to explain to the rep what was going on. T Mobile was able to tell the concerned consumer exactly what had happened. Someone walked into a medical exam T Mobile store about 15 minutes from the victim's place of residence and pretending to be the victim, he asked for a new SIM card which was inserted into the thief's phone.

On the phone with T Mobile, the victim began receiving fraud alerts from their bank, which blocked expensive purchases of luxury items at department stores. The thief had changed the security settings of the T Mobile the customer's banking app and almost got away with it by making several purchases worth more than $10,000. When the T Mobile A customer tried to change the SIM card on his phone, the thief received a text message asking if he was trying to change his SIM card and he pressed “No”, which meant the bad guy continued to control the accounts of the victim.

The only way for the T Mobile the customer could regain control was to go to a T Mobile store and ask an employee to change the SIM card without sending a verification text to the criminal. Yes, it's scary, but part of the problem is that these scams often require an insider working for the carrier to help make the SIM swap go smoothly. These employees do not make enough money to not be motivated by cash to carry out an illegal SIM swap.

This is what operators need to do to make SIM swaps more difficult for thieves.

You might ask why T Mobile failed to send the customer a text message asking them to verify the SIM swap when it initially occurred. This could have ended the whole scam in seconds. There are two answers. Firstly, if there is an intern working in the store, SIM swapping can be done without generating any text. And secondly, it is T MobileThe policy of not sending SMS if the SIM swap is carried out in one of its stores.

However, in-store SIM swaps must generate text BEFORE the change is made. In fact, any SIM card swap must generate text requiring an affirmative response from the device owner before any modification. This action needs to be taken by ALL carriers immediately, otherwise we are going to hear even more stories about their customers being scammed, having their bank accounts drained, and being responsible for expensive purchases they didn't make.

Operators surely don't want to hear about their subscribers being scammed. And since they can't find out which representatives are paid, it's the least they can do. In the case, the T Mobile subscribers were lucky that her bank detected the fraudulent purchases before the transactions were completed.