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If you were to suffer a crime in Australia it would most likely be identity fraud. It costs the Australian economy $2.2 billion a year.
A growing component of identity fraud is the illegal porting of mobile phone numbers. Essentially, somebody convinces your telco they are you and has your number sent elsewhere, potentially giving them access to your personal details, such as bank accounts.
In the last 12 months cyber criminals have fleeced more than $5.8 million from the bank accounts of unsuspecting Australians.
Last week somebody successfully ported my number — while I was on the phone to Telstra telling them it was happening.
What ensued was a sleepless night wondering where my number had gone, what was being done with it and what the ultimate cost was going to be to me.
Thankfully I had frozen by bank accounts immediately and reported it to the police. Others have done the same but not been so lucky.
'It was complete full-on panic'
Deborah Brodie is a small business owner who saw my story on Facebook. The same thing had recently happened to her.
"It was very targeted," she said.
"It was 5.30pm on the Saturday of a long weekend. That gave them 72 hours where there was no security fraud access for the phone company. That gave them time to try and access the bank accounts and those sorts of things."
The scammers attempted to reset Ms Brodie's online banking codes, but her bank became suspicious and froze her accounts. She had no access to her money for 10 days.
"It was complete full-on panic, ringing every single person I could think of that had any form of asset of ours — mortgage companies, banks, the phone companies," she said.
$5.8m lost to phone porting last year
Detective Chief Inspector Matt Craft, from the New South Wales Police Fraud and Cybercrime Squad, said they have had some success in catching out the scammers responsible for illegal porting.
"Many of the individuals we target here are involved in organised crime. That's their primary focus, that is their job," he said.
"We believe in terms of actual losses for the last 12 months, it's about $5.8 million that organised criminal syndicates have been able to obtain because of phone porting."
ID Care in Canberra is leading the way in helping individuals whose personal information has been compromised.
Professor David Lacey is the managing director of the organisation and professor of cyber security at the University of the Sunshine Coast. He says the criminals are staying a step ahead of the authorities.
"It's certainly organised, and in some cases so organised that crims know people are travelling overseas, know that they're not using their phone and are porting their phone before they're landing," he said.
Having been caught in one of these scams leaves you feeling ill, wondering when it might happen again since it seems to be so easy to do.
For their part, telcos say they are working on finding more preventative measures, such as extra layers of security.
Although, as I was told, I could add another security question to my account, but the person at the end of the line in an overseas call centre would be unlikely to even ask it. So what's the point?
What to do if it happens to you
Detective Chief Inspector Craft gave a few tips to offer to prevent the same thing happening to you: don't put too much personal information online, clear your mailbox so people can't steal your bills and understand how valuable your name, date of birth and address are to criminals.
If your mobile number is ported away, this is what you should do:
- Immediately freeze your bank accounts
- Go to a police station and report the crime, rather than just phoning
- Then deal with the telco last, as there's not much they can do
Once that's all been sorted, which could take days, contact ID Care.
Topics: mobile-phones, telecommunications, sydney-2000