Victoria Vargas, Marta González and María Fernanda Ramos, three users of the telecommunications company Claro you They told Séptimo Día
that between November 2023 and March 2024 they had some mishaps with their cell phone SIM.
The phone would lock or go without a tone and what they experienced after having these problems with their cell lines was a true nightmare: Criminals made million-dollar purchases with their credit cards and in one case even asked for a loan.
“Really “In the SIM CARD we have many services tied up, including backups of our information, contacts, applications and with only a few minutes of having the SIM CARD the criminal can obtain all this data,” explains comments Jefrry Garavito, digital security expert.
Major Camilo Ramírez, head of the Police Cyber Center, explains that Text messages are a double authentication tool, from there codes are sent and received that make it easier for the criminal to access users and passwords of different applications, including those of banks.
Thus, these people were victims, according to experts, of a modality known as ‘SIM swapping’.
“Criminals use impersonation processes to go to a physical office of the mobile telephone operator and obtain a copy or duplicate of the SIM CARD and with this they synchronize to obtain all the information and steal the data or impersonate the applications,” comments Jefrry Garavito, digital security expert.
Recommendations:
-If you request portability from your telephone operator, destroy the previous SIM card.
-If you are a victim of phone theft, report it to your operator
-Activate notifications from your banks to be aware of any suspicious movement
In 2024, According to the Police Cyber Center, there are at least 1,789 complaints for abusive access to the computer system and at least 1,500 for violation of personal data.. These are the behaviors that, according to Sijin, serve as a basis for committing a crime that increasingly affects Colombians.
