Bank customers lose £9.1m to 'sim swap' scams

LONDON: Bank customers have lost more than £9.1million in ' SIM swapping' scams over the last five years, The Telegraph can reveal, as police warned people not to share details such as pet names on social media.

New figures from the City of London Police's Action Fraud division show 4,495 have fallen for the scam, where phone companies are duped into switching a person's number to a fraudster's phone. Victims lost on average just under £4,000 as the scam enables criminals to transfer large sums out of a target's bank account undetected.

Police data also showed that the numbers of people falling victim has risen dramatically over the last five years with 144 cases in 2015 compared to 3,111 in 2018 - a more than 20 fold increase. Sim swapping works by scammers convincing phone companies to "port" the victim's number to a new phone, often by posing as a customer wanting to switch their business to a new provider.

Police said fraudsters often needed to control a victim's phone number to wire money out of accounts they had hacked into, as most banks now require new transfers to be confirmed with a call or text. Phil Keating, a senior crime reviewer at the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, said scammers often scoured victim's social media feeds for personal information often used as passwords or memorable security information, such as a mother's maiden name. They could then use this to convince phone companies they were the victim when requesting the swap.

Mr Keating said: "Be very conscious of not putting personal identifiable information in the public domain, such as date of birth, mother's maiden name, names of their pets - the common things that usually are used as memorable information and passwords.