A New Threat to Your Finances: Cell Phone Account Fraud

How to protect yourself...

Be careful with your cell phone to guard against a new account fraud threat.

Consumers have a new privacy threat to worry about, Octavio Blanco reports on consumerreports.org.

It's known as cell phone account fraud, where crooks open up a phony cell phone account in your name and use it to access your bank account, sign up for credit cards, or sell the phone number to other criminals to use, Blanco wrote.

"It's a rude awakening," says Kyle Marchini, senior fraud management analyst at Javelin Strategy and Research, and advisory firm for the financial industry. 

 "Cell phone account fraud can become a huge mess that, unlike credit card fraud, doesn't have infrastructure in place to resolve," Blanco added.

For more on a new type of fraud and steps you can take to protect yourself: https://www.consumerreports.org/scams-fraud/cell-phone-account-fraud/

Photo: Giphy.

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