'SIM-Swap' Scams Expose Risks Of Using Phones For Secondary I.D.
Security experts say our growing reliance on cell phones to help confirm our identity online is motivating "SIM-swap" scams to highjack our numbers.
Gregg Bennett is an entrepreneur in Bellevue, Wash., and he knows a bit about tech. So when his smart phone started acting funny one day last April, he got a bad feeling.
"I was having trouble getting into my email account. And all of a sudden my phone went dead," he says. "I look at my phone and there's no signal. And I go, 'Oh no, something's happened here.'"
It was a SIM-swap — a "social engineering" trick fraudsters use to take control of somebody else's phone number. There.
