New Phone Scam Going On

[LETZRIDE]

We are starting to see a new wave of phone scams over here and thought it might be a good idea to let you all know so that you can protect yourselves.

Right now the current scam involves scammers getting a little bit of your personal information such as your name, date of birth, address and cell phone number. With the tons of data breaches there have been recently this isn't overly difficult. Anyways, when the scammers have this information they use it to call a competitor cell phone company and "port" your phone number to the new company and to their existing phone.

Once they successfully port the number, anything going to your cell phone number they now have access to - such as your bank information. Since, as we all know, a lot of our banking (resetting passwords, e-transfers, etc) are all tied to text and your cell number. Anyways, I guess they have enough information on you that they can reset your password through your phone and sky is the limit to what they access.

The way to protect yourself is to call your cell company and ask them to put a pin number number for port out.

This could just be a Canadian scam, but I feel you Americans likely operate in similar fashion!

[ssms5411]

Yeah, we have the scammers in the states too, what I did was took Verizon’s caller block which makes the caller identify themselves to me, so when I see a toll free number I don’t answer and the rest of the scammers get sent to a voicemail. For $2 a month I think it’s worth it. Haven’t had a scammer since I got it.

[LETZRIDE]

I do that too, but these guys are stealing your number pretending to be you with another phone company. Then once they have control of your cell number they use it to break into your banking info through the “forgot password” mechanisms.

This article details how they do it: https://www.google.ca/amp/s/globalne...-swapping/amp/

I am calling my carrier today to try and get my number port protected by pin.

[ssms5411]

Oh, that’s something new. Haven’t had that before. Had some scammers call my mom and said there was a warrant for her arrest saying something about the IRS and they were on their way to arrest her if she didn’t pay the $2500, it was pretty funny actually my mom told them arrest me, they kept on telling her their almost there, I just told her to hang up after I got the just of it.

[LETZRIDE]

Ya that is a regular one around here too. I haven’t hear the “you have a virus on your computer” one in a long time.

The apple and amazon account ones are getting bad. I get an email from one or the other almost daily...

[ssms5411]

Yeah, I get the Apple ones all the time saying my account has been accessed or I need to change my password. They always provide a link and stuff. I just go out of my email and check it , and it’s always alright.