privacy

2963 readers

1 users here now

Big tech and governments are monitoring and recording your eating activities. c/Privacy provides tips and tricks to protect your privacy against global surveillance.

Partners:

community.nicfab.it/c/privacy

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

What's worse than thieves hacking into your bank account? When they steal your phone number, too (apnews.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

One Monday morning in May, I woke up and grabbed my cell phone to read the news and scroll through memes. But it was out of cell service. I couldn’t make calls or texts.

That, though, turned out to be the least of my problems.

Using my home Wi-Fi connection, I checked my email and discovered a notification that $20,000 was being transferred from my credit card to an unfamiliar Discover Bank account.

I thwarted that transfer and reported the cell phone issues, but my nightmare was just starting. Days later, someone managed to transfer $19,000 from my credit card to the same strange bank account.

I was the victim of a type of fraud known as port-out hijacking, also called SIM-swapping. It’s a less-common form of identity theft. New federal regulations aimed at preventing port-out hijacking are under review, but it’s not clear how far they will go in stopping the crime.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

WASHINGTON (AP) — One Monday morning in May, I woke up and grabbed my cell phone to read the news and scroll through memes.

The ability of thieves to obtain your personal information was again made clear Friday when AT&T said the data of nearly all of its customers was downloaded to a third-party platform in a security breach two years ago.

Although AT&T claims no personal information was leaked, cybersecurity experts have warned breaches involving telephone companies leave customers vulnerable to SIM swapping.

It took ten days to get my number back from Cricket Wireless — and that wasn’t until I told company representatives that I was writing a story about my experience.

“Fraudulent port-outs are a form of theft committed by sophisticated criminals,” reads a company statement that was emailed to me.

“We have measures in place to help defeat them, and we work closely with law enforcement, our industry and consumers to help prevent this type of crime.”

The original article contains 1,130 words, the summary contains 161 words. Saved 86%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!