What is SIM Swapping?
It is a technique used by criminals to duplicate the SIM card of the cell phone, also known as a chip. That is, they steal the victim’s phone number to impersonate her identity in the digital world.
How do they do that?
Criminals trick telephone company workers into transferring phone numbers to SIM cards controlled by them.
SIM card sellers can fall for the lies of fraudsters and deliver a chip with your phone number, to control it. They can also convince the representative to simply transfer the phone number to a new SIM.
Fraudsters, to carry out this operation, usually identify a victim, study it and collect certain information. Sometimes this information is provided by the victim herself on forms or even by throwing bank statements in the trash without shredding them.
If you’re in the crosshairs, your phone may suddenly indicate that it has no coverage, because your phone number is no longer connected to the service network.
A SIM card also works as an international identifier, as it contains a unique serial code.
What do they do with your phone number?
For the above reasons, online banking and other financial applications may provide the option to reset the password by sending a verification code to the phone number that the user registered.
Thus, once the identity is spoofed, criminals receive these codes and reset passwords for online banking and other apps. They empty the bank accounts and get rid of the SIM.