Phone number theft through SIM-jacking is on the rise in the UK

By Adam Vaughan

Adam Gault/Getty Images

Since April 2019, there have more than 300 cases in the UK of attacks in which people try to fraudulently obtain codes that would let them gain control of someone’s mobile number, the UK’s data watchdog has revealed in figures that suggest the practice is becoming more common.

The process of SIM-jacking, or SIM-swapping, involves an attacker contacting a person’s mobile network operator and fraudulently obtaining a porting authorisation code (PAC) enabling them to switch the victim’s phone number to another phone on a different …