E2E Alert! SIM Swapping. What happened to one of our clients…
We had a scary call from one of our clients last Friday. She had her cell phone data stolen and one of her bank accounts hacked and money taken. Things are now under control but it is a reminder to always be on alert and have a cyber security game plan. The story….
Our client, let’s call her Maria, went to a one of the big cellular carrier stores to have her cell phone serviced.
A few nights later, Maria’s computer started playing a YouTube video by itself after 11pm. When she tried to turn off the video, she had no control over her computer, and there was a screen with a phone number and a message: “Your computer has been hacked.” Her phone started ringing incessantly from that number.
She called her IT person, who had her disconnect her computer. Later that morning, she received a notification from her bank of a Zelle transaction (Maria doesn’t have a Zelle account). The bank locked the account, as there were 9 more Zelle transactions pending.
While dealing with the bank, Maria’s computer guy called her and suggested that it’s highly possible she has been a victim of SIM Swap. This is a new scheme where a worker at the cell phone store had swapped out her SIM card and stolen the data on her cell phone. It’s called SIM swapping. Read more by clicking the link.
It’s important to have tech systems in place when something like this happen. Maria had IT support. You can find one locally or a worldwide service like NerdApp. We at E2E take cyber security seriously and have all our devices protected and monitored by a cyber security company and we have malware protection installed. We currently use the paid version of MalwareBytes.
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