A Non-Political Public Service Announcement

It's Important if YOU Have a Cell Phone

American adults lost more than $25.4 billion in 2023 to telephone-based scams, with 21% – more than 56.2 million people – admitting they were victimized. Source.

That caught my attention, and I wanted to share what the deal is, and what you can do to protect yourself.

The problem is the cloning of SIM cards in cell phones. There’s little you can do after you’re attacked, but there are things you can do to help protect yourself. The criminals get control of your SIM card by convincing your carrier that they are you, using personal information they acquired on you from the dark web, and then getting the carrier to reassign your phone number to their SIM card. Let’s say that you’ve been cloned, and you go online to your bank account, and the bank needs to text a security code to your phone as an identity check — it goes to the criminals, and there goes your bank account. Once they are in your phone, they change logins and passwords.

YIKES!

This article from Wired explains how to set up passwords for your phone for AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. Follow the instructions today!

In addition, use high quality passwords, preferably via a password manager. Further, whenever possible, use two-factor authentication with an authenticator program in lieu of having a code texted to you. The Wired article also provides instructions for hard tokens.

The FCC has new rules to protect us from SIM swapping, and they were supposed to go into effect earlier this month, but they’re awaiting final approval from OMB.

So that’s what I’ve got for today. Despite everything political, I thought this was important because I don’t know anyone who DOESN’T have a cell phone.