#sim card scam

The recent incident of the SIM Swap Scam which victimized Ian Caballero has exposed the long-known weakness of 2-factor authentication which uses an owner's mobile number to verify online banking transactions and site logins. The SIM Card Scam has demonstrated the very weakness of the 2nd physical factor -- the SIM card. Once a scammer or thief gains physical access of your mobile phone or SIM card, the modus becomes much easier. In essence, the SIM card become a master key to your vault. This reduces the strength of two-factor authentication as to how easy or hard it is to acquire the user's SIM card. Though this is harder now to clone SIM cards than many years back, it is still possible to clone them. Identity theft used to apply for a SIM card replacement. May be far off but who would have thought that the SIM card scam would go as far as transferring money from the victim's BDO to the perpetrator's Security Bank account. Read more in our articles including "SIM Swap Scam exposes weakness of 2-factor authentication" and "Moo Mini Cards: An Expensive Lesson in Proofreading".