- Office of Electronic Communications

The President of UKE warns against SIM-swap-fraud

The President of the Office of Electronic Communications has requested the providers of mobile telecommunications services and the Polish Bank Association to take action in order to counteract frauds on the telecommunications and banking markets, as a result of which money is stolen from users' bank accounts. The frauds are mainly related to the SIM swap and the call forwarding service.

Criminals who know users’ data, including their phone numbers and details of a bank in which they hold accounts, in an unauthorized manner redirect calls to their numbers. Another method is to impersonate the user at an operator’s point of sale and obtain a duplicate SIM card in a fraudulent manner. In this way, a telephone number is acquired, which is subsequently used to pair mobile banking applications installed on phones and make bank transfers or take over e-mail accounts of users or their accounts on social networks. Criminals thus have access to the authorization or authentication of banking operations, e.g. in the form of text messages.

In order to protect the interests of users who are players in the telecommunications and banking markets, the President of UKE recommends that telecommunications service providers undertake appropriate actions that may contribute to eliminating the described frauds and that users exercise particular caution.