The Central Bank warned of a new fraud scheme with "expired" SIM-cards

Russian scammers have come up with a new scheme that gives them access to personal accounts of subscribers of telecom operators. About it report Izvestia with reference to the Central Bank.

The victim receives a call allegedly from MTS or Beeline with a warning that the SIM card has expired or is about to expire. To extend, they are asked to give the code from the SMS, otherwise the card will be blocked, and the number will be taken away without the possibility of recovery.

In fact, the code that comes to the victim is used to enter the personal account of MTS or Beeline. Having gained access, the scammer can set up call and SMS forwarding to another number or issue a virtual duplicate of the SIM card. The goal is not money from the account, but access to sites where the real owner of the number uses SMS codes to enter. Now there are only reports of attempts to enter banks, but in theory, attackers can use the same scheme for authorization on the public services portal and social networks.

This scheme is especially dangerous due to the fact that there is no aggression in it - as is the case with calls from the "police" or "bank security". On the contrary, the “carrier employee” claims to want to help keep the phone number available, and sometimes even offers discounts or bonuses to the tariff.

This scheme is a response to recent messages about Roskomnadzor's fight against "gray" SIM-cards. If their owners do not provide or update personal data, about 9 million numbers will be blocked. Because of this news, there is more trust in the words of scammers: many have heard something about possible blocking, but did not go into details.

The principle of protection here is the same as in the case of calls from banks: do not give any codes to telephone and call back the official hotline if you suspect that the call may have been real.