How to prevent personal financial loss after losing your mobile phone?

With the development of mobile Internet, personal information security has also been receiving attention. Recently, an article titled "A stolen mobile phone reveals a black industry chain of stealing personal information to steal funds" has become a hot topic on the Internet. The author recorded the process of his confrontation with the criminal suspect after losing his mobile phone. The issue of personal information security protection has once again set off a firestorm on the Internet.

The phone I reported lost was unblocked by someone else?

After the author of the above-mentioned online article lost his mobile phone, he called the telecom customer service to report the loss of his SIM card, but soon the suspect who allegedly stole the mobile phone called the telecom customer service again to unblock the SIM card.

This situation has attracted widespread attention from netizens. Sichuan Telecom apologized to the person involved, saying that he was deceived by the black industry with "boyfriend and girlfriend having conflicts", which led to repeated reporting and unblocking of the phone.

Many netizens questioned that after reporting the loss, one should go to the business hall with the ID card to cancel the report, and that there are loopholes in the operator's reporting and unblocking services.

In this regard, the reporter of Nan Fang Daily learned from the telecom customer service that if you need to cancel the report of loss, you can contact the customer service to provide the password to log in to the telecom online business hall or the owner's name and ID number + three numbers dialed last month. At present, after the loss report service is processed, the cancellation of the loss report service can only be processed once within 24 hours for online channels. In special circumstances, the person must go to the business hall with valid documents to cancel the report of loss.

Zhu Yicong, senior equity partner of Yingke (Shenzhen) Law Firm in Beijing, said in an interview that telecom operators have an absolute advantage in preventing and supervising the illegal use of number resources. When they find that telecom services may be used by others and may endanger the legitimate rights and interests of consumers, they should adopt a high-threshold identity identification and verification procedure to prevent the occurrence of damage. In this incident, the telecom operator followed the industry standard to resolve the customer's report of loss in accordance with the fixed business process, but whether the standard has defects is worth discussing.

It is difficult to claim compensation after a stolen mobile phone

The author of the article "A stolen mobile phone reveals a black industry chain of stealing personal information to steal funds" said, "Several payment companies involved in the incident have actively contacted me. Meituan's loan record has been deleted, and Suning Financial has compensated us for the thousands of dollars we lost. However, due to the deletion of Meituan's loan record, Suning Financial actually paid 300 yuan more than the loss it caused. He has also contacted Suning Financial for a refund. UnionPay QuickPass's compensation has also been cancelled by phone."

The author of the article also stated that since the article was published, several netizens have left messages on the WeChat public account, saying that they had experienced exactly the same scenario, but the amount of loss was relatively large. The most serious one had an online loan of 680,000 yuan and is still seeking compensation.

If a mobile phone is stolen and fraudulent transactions are made, can the user claim compensation from the relevant mobile payment company?

Shu Hongling, a lawyer at Guangdong Shengma Law Firm, explained that due to their own fault (failure to report the loss in time) and technical loopholes, mobile phone users have no room for compensation, and in fact it is impossible to verify whether they themselves or others lifted the report; if the password is cracked, the relevant units that rely on the password cannot be held responsible.

Shu Hongling believes that similar to bank card fraud cases, plaintiffs generally lose when suing banks in such cases.

Old mobile phone numbers may also be a hidden danger

If we protect our mobile phone and prevent it from being stolen, will that be safe?

The answer is no. Let's look at a case.

Recently, a reader reported to our newspaper that when he logged into his JD account during the National Day holiday, he found several orders that he had never purchased, and the recipients and delivery addresses were all unfamiliar to him. "Four of the orders were for medicines that I had never bought, and the delivery address was a city outside the province that I had never been to," said Mr. Xu, who was worried.

In this regard, Mr. Xu complained to JD.com customer service. After checking the login situation, JD.com customer service said that the account had indeed been logged in by someone else in other places. The other party suspected that they used the "database collision" method and used the mobile phone number that Mr. Xu had used 5 years ago to log in to the account.

What is "database collision"? According to technical personnel, "database collision" refers to the act of using leaked user and password information on the Internet to try to match and log in to another website or platform in batches. As long as one match is successful, the user information is successfully stolen.

Mr. Xu had almost forgotten the borrowed mobile phone number and never expected that the number would be used by criminals.

Industry insiders pointed out that many websites currently have an auxiliary login method, namely mobile phone number + verification code, which has become a tool for "black industries" to steal personal information. "Some government agency apps, hotel chains and business ticket booking apps are often blind spots for information leakage. Using mobile phone number + verification code, you can log in and view relevant personal information, especially some uncommon numbers."

The problem of property loss caused by information leakage is serious

In fact, property losses caused by mobile phone-related information leaks are not uncommon.

The "China Mobile Security Status Report for the First Half of 2020" jointly released by 360 Mobile Guardian, 360 Government and Enterprise Security, and the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology recently showed that in the first half of 2020, 360 Mobile Compensation received a total of 1,561 reports of mobile phone fraud, of which 776 reports of fraud were submitted for claims, with a total amount involved of up to 7.789 million yuan and an average loss of 10,037 yuan per person.

The report shows that among all the fraud reports submitted for claims, financial management accounted for the highest proportion, at 26.7%, followed by fake part-time jobs and gambling, at 18.2% and 12.0%, respectively. In terms of the total amount involved, financial management fraud also had the highest total amount, reaching 2.724 million yuan, accounting for 35.0%, followed by identity impersonation fraud, with a total amount of 1.934 million yuan, accounting for 24.8%, and gambling ranked third, with a total amount of 1.351 million yuan, accounting for 17.3%.

In terms of gender differences among reporting users, male victims accounted for 58.8% and female victims accounted for 41.2%, with male victims accounting for a higher proportion than female victims. In terms of per capita loss, males suffered 8,929 yuan and females suffered 11,616 yuan.

In terms of the age of the deceived netizens, those born in the 1990s accounted for 38.1% of all victims, followed by those born in the 2000s at 28.9% and those born in the 1980s at 22.3%. However, in terms of the amount of loss, the per capita loss of those born in the 1980s and above was relatively high.

Report loss, cancel registration, and set password

So, how can we prevent being hacked by mobile phone black market teams and causing financial losses?

In fact, the author of the above-mentioned online article was a bit careless after losing his mobile phone and did not report the loss of his mobile phone number immediately, which gave criminals an opportunity to take advantage of him.

Industry insiders especially remind that whenever you find your phone has been stolen, the first thing to do is to report the loss of your phone number without any hesitation. "Report the loss of your phone card immediately, and then freeze all your bank cards. Don't be lucky. If you are careless or lazy, your money will be transferred away, and it is generally impossible to recover it after it is transferred."

In addition, industry insiders also told reporters that mobile phones must be set with screen locks. Most mobile phone screen locks are not so easy to crack. If they cannot be cracked by brute force, the black industry team can only use new devices to insert cards, and many operations will be restricted. Secondly, many people overlook the fact that they need to set a SIM card lock for their mobile phones, which requires a password to use the SIM card. In this way, even if the SIM card is removed and inserted into another phone, it cannot be used normally to receive the verification code.

How to set up the SIM card, taking Apple mobile phone as an example, users can set it up through "Settings-Cellular Network-SIM Card PIN-Change PIN". However, please note that if you have not set up the SIM card password, its initial password may be 1234 or 0000, but you must try carefully, there are only three attempts, once three wrong inputs, the card will be locked.

"For those mobile phone numbers that have been used before and are not used now, they must be cancelled in time to prevent future troubles." The person also reminded, "And clean up and cancel unused software account information, and be especially careful about apps involving addresses and certificates!"

Only by doing these can you prevent the leakage of personal information and protect your property.