Protecting your financial phone number from payment fraudsters is a very important and relevant issue nowadays. Payment fraudsters try to hijack phone numbers linked to bank accounts to steal money or personal data.
Therefore, it is desirable to have a separate phone number for interaction with a financial institution, register it and “bind” it to your passport data, carefully monitor where the information about the financial number is placed.
How can fraudsters steal a phone number?
An employee of the mobile operator calls you and introduces himself and recommends replacing the SIM card, offering to switch to an improved tariff. To do this, they are asked to dictate the code from the SMS message from the mobile operator.
Remember, mobile operators never ask for codes from SMS messages.
Such a code allows a fraudster to register on your behalf in the online account on the website of the mobile operator.
The fraudster registers and remotely reissues the SIM card.
From that moment on, the SIM card in the smartphone of the owner of the number does not work, and the financial phone number is in the hands of a fraudster.
Having appropriated a phone number, a fraudster can do a lot of damage to its owner:
- steal money from bank accounts;
- issue online loans;
- asking for money from friends on social networks on behalf of the victim;
- get access to the phone book and SMS, accounts in social networks, bank-ID, Google Account (ICloud), e-mail.
To prevent this:
- keep SMS codes from mobile operators, PUK code and SIM card serial number secret;
- register a SIM card in your passport or switch to a contract with a mobile operator;
- disable the remote SIM card replacement service from your mobile operator;
- set up a separate phone number for interaction with the financial institution.
Do not link the financial phone number to social networks, messengers or use it for authorization in other systems.
Do not leave the financial number as a contact number in the profile data and do not use it for daily communication.
