Sometimes we are our own worst enemy when it comes to posting too much personal information on social media that can be leveraged by a criminal for purposes of identity theft.  During the earlier days of the pandemic many people posted photos of their vaccination cards on social media showing their date of birth.  Your birthdate is a significant piece of information that, in the wrong hands can lead to identity theft.

Identity thieves use legal and illegal online sources to gather their victims’ personal information, such as their Social Security number, address, and date of birth and use that information for purposes of identity theft which is a significant threat to everyone.  One important piece of information that many people don’t realize should be kept as private as possible is their cell phone number.  These days your cell phone number is tied to so much of what we do.

When a criminal knows your cell phone number, he or she can leverage that number through commonly available legal databases such as White Pages Premium and learn information such as your current address, past addresses, the names of your family members  and more.  The criminal can also use the number to gain access to your social media accounts and can most significantly use the information gained to answer security questions that would allow the criminal to do a SIM swap whereby your cell phone number would be transferred to a phone of the criminal and thereby defeat dual factor authentication where you get a text message or a code sent to your phone when you go to access your bank account online or any other account that requires significant security.

So what can you do to protect yourself?

TIPS

Limit providing your cell phone number to people and companies as much as possible.  You also may want to consider getting a second phone to use when you have concerns about security.  You also can use apps such as Google Voice https://voice.google.com/about or Burner https://www.burnerapp.com/ that will enable you to create different numbers to use for calls and text messages.

As for dual factor authentication, while sending a code or text message to your cell phone is a simple and effective method of dual factor authentication, you may wish to consider other forms of dual factor authentication such as apps that will generate temporary security codes such as Authy https://authy.com/ or Google Authenticator https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/1066447?co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid&hl=en

Perhaps the best thing you can do to  protect your SIM card from SIM swapping is to set up a PIN or password to be used for access to your mobile service provider account. This will help prevent a criminal from calling your carrier posing as you and convincing your mobile carrier to swap your SIM card to the criminal’s phone merely by providing personal identifying information or answering a security question.

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