SIM card scamming is on the rise, and it is done by those you should be able to trust, service provider employees. Though most companies do background checks on their employees, some slip through the cracks.
This new scam happens when an employee at a cell service provider manually accesses your account, filled with your personal information including last four of SSN, address, phone number, and credit card information. The employee will then take your SIM card and switch it to another phone, allowing them to pose as you.
When the time is right, the corrupt employee will call your cell provider, claiming that the SIM card has been lost or damaged and ask for a new SIM card, all while pretending to be you. All they need to complete the process are basic security question answers, which you likely provided them when they took your SIM card. And the scamming process is then complete. They now have access to all of your personal account information, including your bank accounts.
What advantage would the scammer have with access to your account information? Well, they can drain your accounts in a matter of minutes.
It can be frightening to think that a trusted employee of an organization would break trust and steal from their customer, but it happens all the time. There are ways you can protect yourself in order to prevent life-changing damages. You must be proactive to mitigate this problem… Contact your service provider to require they set up a pin or password that must be used before any changes are made to your account. The second way to protect yourself is to have a restoration plan in place if anything were to happen to your identity.
The bottom line is that there’s really no better time than the present to become a LibertyID member for identity theft restoration protection. LibertyID provides expert, full service, fully managed identity theft restoration to individuals, couples, extended families* and businesses. LibertyID has a 100% success rate in resolving all forms of identity fraud on behalf of our subscribers.
*Extended families – primary individual, their spouse/partner, both sets of parents (including those that have been deceased for up to a year), and all children under the age of 25