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Only 20% of Ukrainians linked their phone numbers to their passport details. The rest at any time risk finding a duplicate of their SIM card in the hands of scammers. Once the number is received, the scammers log into mobile banking, retrieve the password, and withdraw all funds from the card.
Read about how the circuit works and what to do to protect yourself in the OBOZREVATEL material.
80% of Ukrainians are threatened
If you lose your phone, you can restore your phone number just by naming the two contacts you spoke to most often during the month. This service is also in demand among scammers.… They call the potential victim from two different numbers, then create a duplicate card and take possession of someone else’s phone number.
With someone else’s number, scammers can easily log onto social media, gain access to mobile banking, and empty their victim’s bank card.
How the circuit works:
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scammers for weeks calling a potential victim from two different contacts;
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buy a special rate card, then they call the operator, call the victim’s number and say that it is actually his lost number;
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to confirm that they are indeed the owners of the roomcall two numberswith whom he “communicated more often”, although at the same time they themselves called from them;
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the operator “binds” the card to a new duplicate SIM card;
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scammers use someone else’s number to access the victim’s bank account.
“They called from PrivatBank, asked to confirm the transfer. He replied that he had not translated anything and they hung up. I immediately called the bank, they stopped the money transfer. The banking specialist explained that the second time the scammers passed the verification, they called from a card Duplicate SIM “. The translation was addressed to Tsetsenko H. “, – says OBOZREVATEL a resident of Dnipro.
He managed to stop the operation, but had it been delayed for just a few minutes, he might have been left with nothing. According to the deputy director of the EMA Association, Alesya Danilchenko, this scheme is very popular among Ukrainian scammers.
The fact is that 80% of Ukrainians have not linked their card to their personal data. Therefore, scammers can easily create a duplicate and steal your number. “If the clients were identified, or if they had a contract, there would be no problems. I do not urge them to switch to a contract, but they should at least come with a passport to the department. There was a situation where there was a sudden increase. Night number change was canceled. But this is inconvenient for some customers, “says Danilchenko.
The scheme has grown so large that mobile operators have started selling banks the ability to quickly verify whether a customer has recently obtained a phone number. But this service, says Danilchenko, is expensive, only large banks can use it. And they use it only when they discover a “risky” trade.
“We are now launching a center, which small banks can also join, to check if they have restored the phone number from which the alleged customer calls them,” says Danilchenko.
How to protect yourself
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prohibit remote reissue of a duplicate card and “tie” it to your passport. To do this, you must come to the operator’s office with a document;
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if you receive a call from unknown numbers with a certain frequency, immediately contact your mobile operator and link your bank card to a new phone number;
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It is better not to tell anyone the phone number that is linked to the bank card and use it only to communicate with the bank.
If the money has already been transferred from the card, the bank can only return it after an investigation. The police have to get down to work, investigate it and prove it was a fraud. The bank, in this case, blames the operator: it was he who could not protect the number. The operators themselves offer to go to the office with a passport and definitively solve the problem with a possible theft of the number.
