What’s that and how scary is it?
Need a quick $300? Try to do literally anything besides accepting this offer!
Worse yet, this could always devolve into a much bigger debacle if any employees contacted by these bad actors decide to accept the SIM swap offer and deliver the customer data required for this type of fraud in exchange for a cool 300 bucks per account takeover.
You are of course not advised to ever attempt that if you’re in a position to help make it happen, both because you can cause a lot of people a lot of harm and because you will almost certainly face legal consequences.
What can users do to stay safe?
SIM swaps are no joke in the eyes of the law, and should definitely not be treated lightly by mobile phone users either. The good news is you can stay protected from any such incidents if you follow a few basic security principles.
Firstly, you need to understand that two-factor authentication and two-step verification are not infallible methods to keep your private data secure. They are useful and should clearly be enabled wherever possible, but don’t rely very heavily on SMS-based verification.
That’s actually the easiest way for bad actors to take over your accounts to a lot of online services, including banking and cryptocurrency apps. Secondly, if you do choose to trust this method of authentication, be sure to at least look for typical red flags in the phone numbers and links sent to you via text message. Only access trusted websites from your phone and double, triple, or quadruple-check numbers claiming to be T-Mobile support or customer care.
