SIM Swapping Risks to Investors
Smartphones have been a boon to productivity and convenience. Many consumers have shifted their banking and investment transactions to the time-saving apps on their phones. But along with convenience, a reliance on mobile devices has attracted scammers looking to steal information and assets. A growing type of fraud exploiting mobile phone usage is known as SIM swapping.
A subscriber identity module (SIM) was traditionally a small, removable card in your mobile phone that identified your phone number and authenticated your identity to a mobile network. When you got a new phone, you (or the phone store employee) would typically remove the SIM card from your old phone and transfer it to the new one.
In recent years, phone manufacturers have been phasing out physical SIM cards in favor of digital eSIMs, which are built into mobile devices and are more versatile. You can now change your device or service provider without going to a store or fiddling with the hardware.
Source Fool.com
