Why You Need to Stop Sharing Your Phone Number

Companies will stoop to underhanded ways to perform their tracking. It would be best to end the practice of giving companies your phone number. Here are important reasons you need to stop sharing your phone number.

Why you should not give out your phone number?

You are in jeopardy if hackers, identity thieves, and scammers use your phone number. Why? It would help if you considered how they use your phone number. Scammers who are up to no good can find out where you are (and where you’ll be), impersonate you, hijack your phone, or use your accounts. Is that something you want to happen?

Hackers can also use your hijacked phone number to trick your friends and family into sharing passwords or sending money to your compromised number.

Where Can Hackers Get Your Phone Number

There are multiple places where bad people can get your phone number once you share it with anyone. The frequent sources we want to share with you is that scammers are adept at capturing and sharing your phone number. The most common way that swindlers get your phone number is through data breaches and raw data that is found and sold on the dark web.

When you empty your trash, are you careful to shred or tear up private information? Hackers are not beneath themselves to dig through your garbage can and take your old invoices that have your phone number.

Do you ever search the internet and put in your phone number or even your name? Do you know what you can find? The answer is public records that contain an overwhelming amount of data. Here are some examples: criminal records, past addresses, social media accounts, financial information, arrests, warrants, court cases, relatives’ information, and more.

How Do Scammers Get Your Phone Number?

If you don’t think that’s enough, let’s continue with more examples to know how dangerous sharing your phone number can be. The list begins with your name and possibly address. Some other things might be:

> Your assets and how much you paid for your house.
> Driving records.
> Legal issues (bankruptcy, liens, taxes, court cases, lawsuits, etc.).
> Travel information.
> Other online accounts.
> Email addresses.
> Vital records.
> Deep web and dark web records.
> Mugshots.
> Professional licenses.
> IP address.
> VIN.
> Information is stolen from your cell phone

You are at risk if you share your phone number. Stop It!

11 Ways Scammers Can Use Your Phone Number

According to IDStrong, the power of your phone number is immense, giving hackers and scammers a lot of options to do bad things. Some of the most common are:

1. Access your social media accounts.
2. Text message or contact your friends and family to scam them.
3. Spoofing your phone number and calling people you know to commit fraud.
4. Text phishing messages to your contacts – this is called “smishing.”
5. Hijack your mobile phone number and take over your digital life.
6. Commit identity theft pretending to be you.
7. Access your online bank accounts or credit card accounts and take them over.
8. Use your number for robocalls.
9. Send phishing emails to your email account.
10. SIM swap to steal your phone number.
11. Access your voicemail.

What To Do if Scammers are Using Your Phone Number

According to the Pocket app (the original article they used can be seen on Fast Company), you can protect yourself by never letting scammers steal your information (as much as you can. Here are some tips to keep your phone number safe, especially if you discover scammers are using your phone number to commit fraud or scam others.

Do not procrastinate; use these tips to your advantage.

> Contact your wireless service provider and report the abuse. Ask them to put a secondary password on your account so no one can take it over without the password.
> Let your friends and family know your phone number is compromised.
> Stop giving your phone number out online and to anyone who requests it.
> Stay clear of websites and apps that link to your phone.
> Turn on two-factor authentication for all your accounts.
> Get a phone number through Google voice which is not linked to anything else.
> Never click on links in texts or email. You can be at risk for malware.
> Use strong passwords and never reuse them on multiple websites.
> Use third-party authenticators when you can.
> Update your security questions on all accounts, including Gmail.
> Do all you can to keep your phone number safe from hackers and identity thieves.

Overall Summary to Why You Need to Stop Sharing Your Phone Number

This summary will give a high-level overview of why you need to stop sharing your phone number. Please try to absorb it all because it is crucial.

> Why you shouldn’t give out your phone number,
> Where Can Hackers Get Your Phone Number,
> How Do Scammers Get Your Phone Number,
> 11 Ways Scammers Can Use Your Phone Number, and
> What To Do if Scammers are Using Your Phone Number

One more tip we have for you. Get help now setting up a new tablet or smartphone. You can also call us with any questions at 904-430-0350.

Tags: Data privacy, Stop sharing your phone number

Categorised in: Scams

This post was written by Pam Lokker