Last week’s visit by Kanye West to the White House was startling on many levels, however, for me I was particularly disturbed by videos of the visit in which Kanye’s password to unlock his phone was shown and the password was the appallingly simple 000000. This is also troubling because many people use the same password for all of their accounts. Having such a weak password for your phone puts you in great danger of having all of the data on your phone vulnerable to a someone who manages to steal your cell phone. We all conduct many  activities on our cell phones which contain much personal information that can lead to identity theft if our phone falls into the wrong hands so it is important to follow basic security steps to keep your phone safe I have written many times about protecting your cellphone from a cyberattack or hacking, but what about an old fashioned theft of your phone? Cell phones can get lost or stolen and it is important to protect yourself from those dangers as well.
A Subscriber Identity Module, more commonly known as a SIM card, is an integrated circuit that stores information used to authenticate subscribers on mobile devices, such as a cell phone.  The SIM card is able to be transferred between different devices, and often is, when people update into a newer cell phone.  However, as more and more financial transactions, such as online banking, are now done through cell phones, identity thieves with access to their victims’ SIM cards are also increasingly becoming able to intercept security codes sent by text messages for online banking as part of dual factor authentication and thereby providing the identity thief with the opportunity to empty their victims’ bank accounts and cause other financial havoc.
Porting is the name for the crime where someone convinces your phone carrier to transfer your SIM card to a phone controlled by the criminal. To prevent someone from stealing access to your phone through porting, you should have a PIN added to your account so that no one can call your cell phone provider posing as you and ask to have your SIM card transferred.
TIPS
The best protection for your phone starts with a strong password, facial recognition or fingerprint scanner.  Also, set your phone so that it locks when you are not using it.  Make sure that you back up everything in your phone regularly. Install the Find My iPhone app if you have an iPhone or the Find My Device app if you have an Android phone.  These will enable you to locate your cellphone if it is lost or stolen and also allow you to send a command to erase everything in your cellphone even if the phone has been turned off.  If your phone is lost or stolen, you should immediately contact your wireless provider to have them disable the SIM card in your phone so that your phone cannot be used by someone else.  As for protecting your phone from cyberattacks, it is important to both download and continually update security software.
The best thing you can do to protect yourself from spear phishing emails and text messages is to never click on links in emails or text messages, regardless of how legitimate or innocuous they may appear unless you have absolutely confirmed that the communications are legitimate. The risk of downloading malware to your phone is too great if you click on links without verifying that they are legitimate.
There are things that you can do and there are things that the wireless carrier industry can do to reduce porting. Fortunately, there is an easy way to enhance your security to protect your SIM card from being switched and that is to set up a PIN or password to be used for access to your mobile service provider account.  Sprint and Verizon use PINs while T-Mobile and AT and T will let you set up a password.
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