5 Cases Of Internet Scams Or How Can A Hacker Use Your Cell Phone Number?

Internet scams are probably as old as the internet itself. As the internet brought us together, making the world a global village and broadened our reach, it has also served as an avenue to broaden the scope of many nefarious activities. Scammers now run amok everywhere on the internet, hitting targets and looking to score as much money as they can from unsuspecting individuals. Hackers are looking to get access to your information and use them against you even from just your phone number. The phone number might look like a tiny bit of information but in the hands of scammers and hackers, it can be the key to taking your valuables. 

How Can A Hacker Use Your Cell Phone Number?

Just that number can be used to look you up and find more information about you which is then used to run scams against you. In the article “What can someone do with your phone number? “ on Radaris’ blog the author covers numerous ways of how people are using details for various fraudulent activities. So, Let’s talk about some of these common scams.

Internet Scams And How A Hacker Can Use Your Cell Phone Number

Social Media Fraud

Scammers especially like to target social media users using elaborate scams just to steal money or information. With your phone number and other information on your profile, hackers can gain access to your contact lists and send them messages whereby they ask your friends or family to contribute towards saving you from a situation or treat an illness. They can sound very convincing when personal information taken from your profile is used which is why people need to be very careful about the information they make public and be conscious of how someone can use your phone number.

Advance Fee Fraud 

This kind of fraud is also one of the most common scams you can find online. The scam is named after the Nigerian criminal code that prohibits fraud called 419 and nicknamed the Nigerian letter scam or Nigerian Prince Scam. It involves an individual getting a message from someone who claims to be a member of a wealthy or royal African family and they are looking to move a large cache of the family fortune to you for you to keep it safe for them. By using your number they can use your identity to make it convincing for your contacts and after the money has been used as bait, the scam itself is for you to send them some amount of money as an advance fee to facilitate the transfer.

Online Dating Scams

Many people have been able to find love on dating platforms, online dating has been a hub for scams and many have lost fortunes through dating online. Usually, the scammers will come up with different profiles to make them easier to find or have a connection with someone and after dating the person online for a while, they try to move the conversation to get the number and you can consider what people can do with your cell phone number but they can use this to gain access to your details and try to use this to scam you or others.

Fake Charities or Sweepstakes 

Scammers are always looking for ways to take advantage of a situation especially when it is something that provokes a strong emotional response such as a tragedy. Every kind of tragedy is seen as an opportunity for them to take money from people by using their generosity against them. When a disaster happens, scammers will use this to establish a fake charity and send email, text, and online messages soliciting donations to help the victims of the disaster which will be carted away. 

Phishing Scams

This scam is one of the most common scams on the internet and easy to carry out too. One gets an email from a famous company, group, a school, the government, or your bank for you to verify a piece of particular information. The message is composed to look like it came from the organization and contains a link for you to provide a bit of personal information to verify your identity, asking for passwords, token codes, one-time passwords, date of birth, and others. When an unsuspecting individual provides the information requested, it is used to attack the person by logging into their target platform like a bank account, and money wired out of the bank account. These are all examples of how a hacker can use your cell phone number to access your details for scams.

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