“SIM Swap is a cyber-fraud that has tricked many individuals at large in India. The scam has been going on for months now claiming many victims all over the country. This new deceitful technique is employed by criminals to trick gullible smartphone users who find themselves losing cash during a matter of minutes.
Several tech-savvy urban youths too have ended up falling for this cyber fraud. In fact, criminals have devised several ways to commit ‘SIM Swap’ frauds. Here we look at one of the most common techniques used to trap people.
SIM swap fraudsters would send phishing mail impersonating MasterCard companies/health insurers to require out legal name dates of birth, addresses, and phone numbers of their target. They conjointly collect personal knowledge of the users from social media platforms or through Trojans/Malware. Next, they’d decided the mobile service supplier of the victim and request a brand new SIM claiming they need lost mobile handset or got a new mobile handset or broken SIM card. Exploitation the non-public knowledge of the victim, fraudsters manage to urge a brand new SIM card issued for the registered mobile range of a user. Once a brand new SIM card is issued, the mobile service suppliers deactivate the previous SIM card that in SIM swap fraud case is in customers’ possession. Now, the victim won’t receive any SMS on their phone.
How to be safe from SIM swap fraud?
- The first alert is often your mobile network.
- If your phone is out of network unceasingly for some hours, it’s an alert and you must complain the same to your mobile operator straight away.
- Check your bank accounts statement often and additionally register for each email and SMS alerts for your banking transactions.
- The twenty digits SIM number mentioned on the rear of the SIM card is crucial. Never share it with anyone.
- Enabling two-factor authentication, which requires a randomly generated passcode in addition to a username and password, on sensitive social media, credit card, and bank accounts.
eScan Mobile Security for Android helps you in blocking, data wiping, SIM watching, and locating your phone through GPS finder. With its Anti-Theft feature, eScan ensures complete protection to your phone from any unauthorized access on the event if your phone device is lost or stolen. The Administrator mode has to be turned on to use the anti-theft features. In case your device is lost or stolen, Lock Watch feature of eScan captures a photo of the user using the front camera after more than two failed to unlock attempts.
It provides protection to the Android-based phone against any mobile malware attacks, Data loss, privacy threats, and more. It secures the data of your lost/stolen device with its remote lock, Wipe Data and Data Blocking feature. In short, it becomes a nightmare to the thief who illegally possesses somebody else’s device especially when the owner is remotely accessing his/her device.
For more updates on the eScan blog, click here.