Does Your Bank Protect You from Online Phone Number Spoofing Scams?

«Sms-man» offers to receive SMS to a virtual phone number for signing up for more than 500 popular services on the most beneficial terms.

When you buy online phone number at SMS-man, you expect some anonymity. Well, it’s not always the case. The fact of your purchase becomes advertised to scammers, making them vulnerable to spoofing.

Banks can protect your inbound number so that scammers can’t copy it. But do all banks do it?

Number spoofing is a useful instrument for scammers. It allows them to manipulate caller ID to reveal a number that matches the number on your bank card. This way, scammers have a good chance of convincing you to share your life savings.

Ideally, the national government should fight this problem by making up a list of ‘do not originate’ (DNO) numbers. These numbers are considered to be suspicious due to missing outbound calls. Of course, this scheme is not supported by every single bank.

Banking security measures

If the victim’s account data collected by scammers originates from a phishing attempt and the bank uses a 2-step authentication method, then the login details will grow stale rather quickly. A successful phish allows the scammer to get into a customer’s account, but usually only once.

They can look around and collect intel to proceed with the call. All further actions like making a payment or changing the authentication settings would have to be managed separately. In fact, this kind of request would make the victim quite suspicious.

By the way, some banks are more likely than others to be attacked by scammers. For example, the customers of banks that scan QR codes for authorization and payment purposes are less vulnerable than those that use SMSs. After all, it is harder to copy the QR code on the bank phishing platform than it is to develop an input field for the verification code.

Consequences of spoofing attacks

The scammers will do their best to not make the victim suspicious. So, the scammers can make the money disappear from the personal account without leaving the possibility to reverse payments.

Some banks offer you official insurance that would protect you from potential fraud, while others try to stay aside when it comes to scam responsibility.

In many countries, you are protected by law against scams. The only exception is made for careless customers who help the scam to occur. They might give away their login credentials to third parties, which resulted in fraudulent activity on their account.