Sky Mobile Moves to Protect UK Customers from SIM Swap Fraud
Sky (Sky Broadband) has today announced that they’re implementing JT‘s Fraud Protection Services (FPS) on their Sky Mobile service, which will introduce additional security measures to help protect customers that are carrying out financial transactions on their mobile device.
The FPS service is designed to protect against SIM Swap Fraud (aka – SIM Splitting, SIM Jacking, SIM Hijacking and Port-Out Scamming) and enable Secure Customer Authentication (SCA). As part of that, it will also detect the related signs of Call Diversion Fraud (aka – call forwarding fraud) and can instantly confirm a customer’s identity by using JT’s Know Your Customer (KYC) system.
In SIM Swap Fraud a criminal will obtain their victim’s personal information (name, bank details, address etc.) by trawling through social networks or past data breaches, which are then used to contact the victim’s mobile operator, while pretending to be the victim, in order to request a SIM swap and change of personal settings.
Advertisement
Once the criminal ‘owns‘ your number, they can intercept sensitive financial and authentication messages, which can then be exploited to gain access to your bank accounts etc. Sadly, the first the victim often knows of a problem is when their mobile phone stops working, which customers might initially blame on a signal/network problem.
The FPS system works to prevent this. Once triggered by the bank, JT’s system, in conjunction with Sky Mobile, will carry out a seamless background check to verify whether the SIM has been swapped on the customer’s phone, a key indicator of potential fraud, and prevents them from stealing customers’ identities. The service is already widely used by banks and businesses throughout the UK and around the world.
Paul Sweeney, MD of Sky Mobile, said:
“With SIM swap fraud on the rise, it’s important to us that Sky Mobile customers are kept safe, which is why we’ve partnered with JT FPS to provide them with an additional level of protection and peace of mind.”
In addition, JT’s Head of Fraud Protection Services, Clare Messenger, noted that SIM Swap Fraud is currently on the rise and, on average, a customer loses £2,500 when a successful fraud is carried out. “What’s different about JT’s FPS platform is that it takes away the complexity of using multiple arrangements with mobile operators to create a single system to quickly verify transactions,” said Clare.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
« Gov Confirm Measures to Tackle Anonymous UK Internet Trolls
As it’s not mentioned in the article, JT is Jersey Telecom.
It’s a pity that more UK banks don’t offer app or key based two factor authentication as that avoids this problem completely.
EE offered me the ability to set an account password to prevent this, which I initially declined as I was in a rush but then called back the next day to turn it on.
Speaking to the very helpful guy he asked me why I wanted to, and when I explained about SIM swap fraud and the heightened exposure I have to this given my industry, he offered something better. There’s now a block on my account meaning that they can’t swap SIMs over the phone, I have to go to an EE store with passport or drivers license to get a SIM replaced.
I didn’t know that this was something that could be done and I’d recommend it to anyone who will be able to easily get to a physical store for their network.