Beware of SMS PIN Code Verification Scams

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Updated: August 25, 2017 2017-08-25T15:32:58 -
Date: August 25, 2017 2017-08-25T15:22:41

If someone calls or contacts you and asks you to give him/her an SMS PIN code that was sent to your phone, please do not. As matter of fact, never give out SMS PIN codes sent to your phone to anyone, not even to your friends or a customer support representative. I am telling you this because someone called me from a strange telephone number and told me he was doing some registration online and he mistakenly put my number in when he was registering. He said my number is similar to his number and that the password, code, or PIN of what he was registering with was sent to my phone, which I actually received.

He was now appealing to me to give him the reset PIN code that was sent to my phone so that he could finish his registration. I told him to call me with the number he claimed was similar to mine so that I could verify his claim. He told me he didn't have any credit on that phone to call me.

I got online to find out more, only to discover he was actually trying to reset my banking and email passwords, in order to gain access to them. I later found out that the caller is a fraudster. If I had given him the SMS PIN code which was sent to my phone, he would have used it to reset my bank and email account passwords, gain access to them and use them fraudulently.

Please let us be careful and vigilant. Fraudsters, scammers or cyber criminals are devising new ways every day to trick people into giving them access to their online accounts. Therefore, never give out an SMS PIN code that is sent to your phone to anyone. That code or PIN, which is usually a combination of numbers, works together with your password to prevent hackers from gaining access to your online account, even if they have stolen your account user name and password.

Remember, hackers or cyber criminals can steal your online account user name and password using phishing scams, but they cannot steal your SMS PIN code unless they call you and you give the code to them. Your SMS PIN code is another level of security that prevents access to your online account even if your account credentials are stolen by cyber criminals. And, anyone who contacts you and asks you to give them an SMS PIN code that was sent to your phone, that person is a scammer or cybercriminal.

Note: Some of the names, addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers in email samples on this website may have been impersonated.

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