Sim Card Fraud - a new way to steal your money

I've seen this before and it's an up and coming way to steal every cent/penny you have.

http://www.itv.com/news/west/2016-04-14/thieves-use-womans-sim-card-to-steal-6-000/?

Thieves use woman's Sim Card to steal £6,000

Felicity Leath always uses her mobile to do her banking but just her phone suddenly lost all service before Christmas last year.

She rang provider EE who told here there was a problem with her sim card, and she needed to get a new one.

EE told her a fraudster had accessed her phone account, requested a new sim card and then used that to get a new passcode for her online banking.

Though I am elderly, I am not unsophisticated and was probably online before many people here were even born and I spent my whole working life in banking and, because of that, I'd never use a handheld device to access online banking or make payments.

Call me old-fashioned, but I'm a lot less likely to lose my money than those who do.

Though not relevant in this case, considering the number of handheld devices lost/stolen every day, it's frightening to think it could lead to having all your money stolen.

Another example and, in this case, the fraudster not only emptied his bank account, but applied for an £ 8,000 loan in his name.

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/apr/16/sim-swap-fraud-mobile-banking-fraudsters?

16 April 2016

Sims says that when he contacted his bank, Halifax, the call centre told him it is handling hundreds of sim scams every day, making it the fastest growing fraud in the country – although Halifax later disputed this figure.

Chris Sims was sitting in his Nottingham home a fortnight ago when his iPhone, on the EE network, suddenly stopped working. Within 75 minutes the fraudsters who had hijacked his phone had, through his online banking app, emptied his bank account of £1,200 and applied for an £8,000 loan in his name. But Sims is just the latest victim of a financial scam that is sweeping Britain: sim-swap fraud.

When Sims rang EE, it soon emerged that someone posing as his wife had managed to persuade the mobile network to activate a new sim card – in effect giving the fraudsters control of his mobile number. The crooks were then able to reset all his mobile banking passwords, using his phone as identity, and the passwords being sent to the phone.

wow..... and tbh i thought it was only public wifi networks you had to worry about using a handheld device such as a phone / tablet. I know the iPad doesn't have a SIM card in it, but now I'm curious to do some research to see if it is as vulnerable as a device with a SIM card.

thanks for posting this, TB.

The point is HillBilly that an awful lot of low paid temporary staff have access to a lot of sensitive and highly valuable personal information on a lot of people nowadays and that can be sold on to fraudsters and, the way things are now, there's not a lot to stop them.

You'd think that if anyone has the tightest security it would be a bank, but I have noticed on the occasions where staff have divulged information to fraudsters, the sentences imposed in the UK are remarkably light. I can be certain that this is not down to banks and I think I can guess why, but something needs to be done, because with this type of fraud, the average person stands to lose an awful lot of money and it will have a serious effect on a lot of commercial organisations.

It annoys me that banks and commerce are only too willing to encourage people to handle their banking on handheld devices without mentioning the security risks. I would never do it, and it's not just because I'm an old fuddy duddy.