Many of you may know what the SIM swap scam is, however, I did not, and unfortunately, I got the opportunity to learn the hard way on Christmas Eve. If you're not going to read the rest of this, here's the quick take-away: If you unexpectedly receive a text message from your mobile carrier providing you with a PIN, do NOT ignore it. Call your provider immediately and take action because someone is likely trying to gain temporary access to your number (or someone else's on your plan) and the damage they can cause is far-reaching.
My wife and I began receiving texts and voicemail from T-Mobile on Christmas Eve morning. The texts would include one-time PINs, and the voicemail was from T-Mobile representatives apologizing for getting disconnected. Each time, we would call T-Mobile and speak to a representative and inform them that someone was trying to gain access to our account. And each time, the representative would assure us that there is no way it would happen due to the notes and flags they were putting on our account. I was even laughed at the 4th time I called when I got put on the line with the same representative I spoke to the 2nd time, as she thought it was silly that I was so concerned. When I asked why this person would be working so hard just to swap a SIM, I was told it was probably so he/she could make international calls on our account. On our 5th call, in the middle of anther one of these assurance speeches, it happened. My wife's phone lost service. I interrupted the T-Mobile representative and informed her, who in disbelief began the process of routing the SIM back to my wife's phone. Roughly 5 minutes later my wife is back online, but there's a big problem: she can no longer sign in to our Wells Fargo account. That's when it clicked for us: he spent all day trying to get access, got turned down countless times until one bad T-Mobile representative granted his request, just so that he could use our number to reset our Wells Fargo password. The fact that it was Christmas Eve evening when it all went down likely wasn’t a coincidence either as Wells Fargo and T-Mobile storefronts were all closed, and getting help wasn’t easy. Fortunately, we caught it just in time and we were able to get Wells Fargo on the phone and our accounts locked down. The only actions he was able to take was to move money across multiple accounts into one, with the intention of making an ATM withdrawal (according to a Wells Fargo employee familiar with this scam). We spent the better part of the day after Christmas undoing the damage: closing and opening Wells Fargo accounts, turning back on online access, switching mobile providers, …etc. I’m left feeling vulnerable. Despite all our calls and our warnings to T-Mobile, they still let the fraudster in. Immediately after we locked down our Wells Fargo account, as in not even 2 minutes afterwards, I was back on the phone with T-Mobile, because they had “someone on the line who wants to swap SIM cards and I just need to get your permission to go ahead”. I felt helpless because obviously T-Mobile was doing nothing to prevent this from happening. When I suggested that we shut the whole thing down and cancel our T-Mobile account entirely, going without service for the remainder of Christmas Eve and Christmas day, I was informed that while our representative could do that, she couldn’t ensure that the fraudster wouldn’t be able to call in and turn everything back on. We ended up making it out okay, and it appears that after the fraudster realized he wasn’t going to get anything out of our Wells Fargo accounts, he moved on. I’m not sure at all that switching to a new carrier will prevent this from happening, but due to T-Mobile’s response, or the absolute lack-there-of, I felt I had no choice. I want to make others aware of this as we might have had more options had we known what was going to happen when we first started receiving unexpected texts and voicemail from T-Mobile. Please do take it very serious and act quickly if you suspect this is happening to you.
Submitted December 26, 2017 at 11:36PM by NegativePitch http://ift.tt/2Dj3AND
