SIM Swapping: Scammers Hijack Smartphones and Steal Thousands

The Perfect Scam

AARP

True Crime, Aarp, Fraud, Society & Culture, Scam, Crime, Bobsullivan

4.5 • 980 Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2024

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We use our smartphones for just about everything these days, and that makes them a prime target for scammers. Online banking often relies on a code sent in a text message to verify the account holder's identity, but criminals have figured out a way to impersonate the phone and intercept these messages. This is exactly what happens when Jeff receives an SOS message on his phone, and before the day is over, thieves steal tens of thousands of dollars from him. The good news is, there's a simple thing we can all do to safeguard our phones and our accounts today.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week on The Perfect Scam.
0:03.0	People do everything on their phones now.
0:06.0	They do their banking.
0:08.0	They do bill paying on phones.
0:10.0	And so a lot of your financial history and financial accounts are accessible through your phones, which makes it a prime target.
0:17.0	And even if you do work on your desktop, when you log in, they text your phone as a 2FA to let you in, which means your phone's involved everywhere.
0:24.6	So our phone is almost our password at this point.
0:26.6	It is, and it's the big motivation for SIM swaps.
0:29.6	If they get your phone number and control of it, then it's like they have your password.
0:34.6	Welcome back to the perfect scam. I'm your It's like they have your password.
0:41.4	Welcome back to the perfect scam. I'm your host, Bob Sullivan.
0:44.0	In many ways, our phones are now our passwords.
0:47.2	They're often the key to logging into our bank accounts,
0:50.0	our word computers.
0:51.4	Those short text messages with secret codes seem to rule our lives now.
0:56.0	Criminals have taken notice and they figured out a diabolical way to intercept these messages
1:02.0	to impersonate our phones and in so doing impersonate ourselves.
1:07.0	Today you'll hear from a victim who was targeted by this kind of phone hijacking attack,
1:12.7	and before the day was over, tens of thousands of dollars had been stolen from him.
1:18.0	But the good news is today's episode comes with homework.
1:21.8	There's a five-minute fix for this problem when you could probably do yourself.
1:25.8	To be honest, a fix, I didn't know about
	...

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