A new scam that takes advantage of old technology is landline identity theft which has rececently been used by scammers to hack into someone’s bank account without knowing the password for the account.  Many people no longer use landlines, but may not have noticed that an old landline number of theirs is still tied for security purposes to their bank account.  Scammers will contact the phone company posing as the consumer to have their landline number moved to the cell phone of the scammer.  The scammer then asks the bank to change his password whereupon the bank using its security protocol sends a verification code to the old landline phone number now controlled by the scammer which enables the scammer to then change the password and access the victim’s bank account.

Many people neglect or fail to remember to update their security settings for their accounts and an old phone number or email address in the hands of a scammer can lead to disaster.

TIPS

The first thing to do to avoid becoming a victim of this scam is to review all of the recovery and security settings on all of your accounts to make sure they are up to date and delete any old phone numbers or email addresses.  You also should contact your phone service provider and have a PIN put on your account so that your number cannot be transferred to another phone without the PIN being used.  If you are particularly paranoid, which I am sometimes, you may even arrange with your phone service provider to not transfer your phone number to another phone unless you do it in person.

Consider using an authenticator app for your accounts such as Google Authenticator, Authy or Microsoft Authenticator for the dual factor authentication on your accounts rather than, as is most common, having a code sent to your phone.

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