How scammers steal your identity with SIM swap fraud?n

If there’s one thing we’ve learned about scammers, it’s that they’re determined.nnA lot of people I speak to about fraud and security say that they can’t imagine themselves as a target.nn“Why would anyone want to target me?”, they wonder. I want to make it clear that scammers don’t care who you are: their target is everyone.nnScammers are out to steal your identity, and to get control of your accounts and services. With the increasing use of pins and passwords that are sent to your mobile number (commonly referred to as one-time codes), if a scammer can get access to your mobile service, and the messages sent to you, then they can potentially access your accounts.nnBy the time a scammer has access to your mobile service, they’ve already been busy at work collecting enough personal information to pretend to be you. They will have nabbed your phone number, bank account information, as well as identification information and documents.nnProtecting your own personal information is the first step in preventing identify theft. But when that fails, we want to help by putting up one more barrier in front of criminals as a last line of defence.

How to keep yourself safe from Sim Swap Attack?

One way we’ve found to help stop them is to implement multi-factor authentication (MFA). In simple terms, MFA combines multiple layers of verification to help institutions protect and prevent a criminal from accessing your account, even if they manage to steal or guess your password.nn(Here’s how you can get started with MFA if you haven’t already)nnTelstra has strong authentication processes but we have still seen some fraudsters get enough personal and account information from customers and persuaded them to give up their one-time codes in order to pass authentication.nnFrom there, they can access other accounts including bank accounts, superannuation accounts and investment or crypto currency wallets.nnThis is where we want to intervene to help stop this train of fraud in its tracks. So in addition to MFA, we have introduced additional defences by enabling MyTelstra app users to use Facial Biometrics and a Telstra PIN.nnWe strongly encourage customers to download the app and enable the use of biometrics and a Telstra PIN. The MyTelstra App is a consistent, always-on secure channel for customers and Telstra to communicate.

Keeping you safe now and into the future from Sim swap Attacks?

We’re actively protecting you against scam threats through our Cleaner Pipes initiative. We’re blocking millions and millions of scam calls every day from reaching our customers and have successfully stopped 100 million scam calls so far. We’re also working with government agencies to make the text message channel more secure and taking down scam websites before they can hurt our customers.nnWhen you sign up with Telstra for a phone plan, broadband service or even just as a pre-paid customer, we believe we have a duty of care to keep you safe from threats that come in from outside the network. While we will never prevent every scam or cyber- crime, our aim is to prevent as many as possible by making it as hard as possible for scammers to succeed.nnWe’ll have more to share on other ways we’re keeping you safe soon.