We must remember that the aim of digital criminals is to deceive victims in order to steal money, personal information and bank details without them realising that they are falling victim to a scam (this is called social engineering).
One of the means used by cybercriminals to scam their victims is the telephone. By means of telephone calls, the cybercriminal poses as a bank employees, a technician from a computer company, a telephone operator, an investment company or any other type of company, with the aim of getting victims to make a payment or to provide their bank and personal details under various pretexts.
While some people may find a call like this strange, what if the phone number that shows up in the caller ID is a legitimate number? This is a technique that cybercriminals are using more and more frequently in telephone scams, and it is known as caller ID spoofing.
With this technique, cybercriminals manage to mask their telephone number behind the legitimate telephone number of the company or institution they are impersonating. By doing this they get: greater anonymity and an enormous capacity for deception.
SIM swapping is a type of fraud that involves obtaining a duplicate of the victim's SIM card in order to gain control of the communications on their mobile phone. To do this, cybercriminals obtain personal and confidential information from the victim, usually through social engineering techniques such as Phishing, Smishing or Vishing, in order to impersonate your identity and contact your phone company to provide you with a duplicate of the SIM card. In some cases, it is even possible to obtain this SIM card by transferring the line to another telephone company.
Once the cybercriminal has the new SIM card in his/her possession and activates it, he/she already has full control of the communications of that telephone line and can receive and make calls and read or send text messages. On the other hand, the victim will lose their phone access and coverage when their SIM card is automatically deactivated.
At this time, the cybercriminal will take control of the victim's Online Banking using the verification SMS that financial institutions usually send to their customers' mobile phones.
And, if you detect suspicious transactions in your account, or if you have disclosed your details in what you think is a scam, contact your branch manager immediately or call the customer service helpline 24 hours a day on 93 887 25 25 / 900 40 40 90 or +34 938 87 25 25 if you are abroad.