It stores vast amounts of personal information - such as photos, emails, and passwords for online accounts.Īt best, you may receive a lot of scam and robocalls. In the past, hackers couldn’t do much damage with just your phone number.īut today, a cell phone is more than just a digital address book. 🎯 Related: What Is Voice Phishing (Vishing)? Can You Avoid It? → What Can Scammers Do With Your Phone Number? When you pick up, scammers can begin their attack. Autodialers generate and call random phone numbers. In some cases, scammers don’t even need your phone number. Hackers can send you fraudulent text messages or phishing emails, tricking you into providing your phone number or other personal data. This is one of the few attack tactics in which the scammer must be close to you. Scammers can watch you type your phone number on a computer or mobile device.

If you’ve answered or responded to previous phone scams, your contact information could be on a “target list” that scammers buy and sell to each other. Scammers can get your phone number by stealing mail from your mailbox or local collection boxes. Mail theft is rising, with over 33,000 reports of carrier robberies and mail theft in 2021. Scammers can easily buy your phone number and other personally identifiable information about you on Dark Web sites and forums. The Dark Web is a layer of the internet wherein cybercriminals sell stolen and counterfeit data. Scammers can buy your phone number from these companies and use it to contact you. A data broker collects and sells consumer information, like phone numbers and email addresses. But without tightening your security settings, your phone number and other sensitive information can be publicly available to scammers. Many social media services (and other online accounts) require your phone number to set up an account. Your contact information could be compromised by: īut data breaches aren’t the only way that scammers get your phone number. For example, T-Mobile experienced a data breach in November 2022, which led to the leaks of over 37 million phone numbers and other Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Surprisingly, it's pretty easy to find someone's phone number - especially with the amount of recent major data breaches. And eventually, they’ll come for your money. They want to harass you, steal your identity, or access your online accounts. Scammers want your cell phone number for a few reasons. In this guide, we’ll explain how scammers get your phone number, what to do once a scammer has your number, and ways to keep your phone number and financial information safe. With over 50.3 billion scam calls in 2022, there’s a chance that you will face a phone scammer one day soon if you haven’t already. Total losses to phone scams totaled $39.5 billion in the past 12 months.” According to the latest data : “1 in 3 Americans report falling victim to phone scams, with 20% more than once. You don’t need to be a business owner to be at risk of phone scams. Instead, they were part of an elaborate phone scam plaguing Americans each year. But they were never dealing with the IRS.

To stay out of trouble, they quickly converted the restaurant’s cash into prepaid cards and wired them to the agent on the phone. Lanette Byers' employees were spooked when the IRS called the Big Acai restaurants that she owns and demanded debt repayment.

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