{"id":4182,"date":"2023-01-05T00:15:33","date_gmt":"2023-01-05T00:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/?p=4182"},"modified":"2024-08-27T05:31:28","modified_gmt":"2024-08-27T05:31:28","slug":"what-is-sim-swapping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/privacy-and-safety\/what-is-sim-swapping","title":{"rendered":"What is SIM swapping &#038; how does the hijacking scam work?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"main-content\" data-grid=\"col-12\">\n<p class=\"c-paragraph-3\">SIM swapping, also known as SIM splitting, simjacking, or SIM hijacking, is a technique used by fraudsters to get control of your phone number. With your phone number, hackers can take advantage of two-factor authentication to gain access to your bank accounts, social media accounts, and more.<\/p>\n<p><b>To understand SIM swapping, you first have to know how two-factor authentication and SIM cards work. <\/b>  <\/p>\n<p><b>Security experts recommend<\/b> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/privacy-and-safety\/importance-of-two-factor-authentication\">two-factor authentication<\/a> to protect your online accounts, but it isn\u2019t a perfect system \u2013 a third party with your phone number could bypass it.   Two-factor authentication alone doesn\u2019t 100% protect your accounts from getting hacked.  <\/p>\n<p>Setting up two-factor authentication for an account typically entails providing your cell phone number, so that you can receive unique codes to use each time you log in after entering your username and password. The code may also be sent to your email.  Since two-factor authentication has become so common, hackers now have another challenge to gaining access to your information \u2013 they now need to get your cell phone number, too. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"full-bleed-image\">\n        <picture class=\"c-image\"><source srcset=\"https:\/\/m365contenthub.wpengine.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/042-1600x600-1.jpg\" media=\"(min-width:767px) and (max-width:1600px)\" \/><source srcset=\"https:\/\/m365contenthub.wpengine.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/042-1600x600-1.jpg\" media=\"(min-width:540px) and (max-width:767px)\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/m365contenthub.wpengine.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/042-1600x600-1.jpg\" srcset=\"https:\/\/m365contenthub.wpengine.com\/en-us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/042-1600x600-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/>\n    <\/picture>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SIM swapping allows criminals to impersonate you or gain access to your online accounts. Learn the warning signs of SIM swapping here. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4180,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[31],"class_list":["post-4182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy-and-safety","tag-privacy-and-safety"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.10 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What is SIM swapping &amp; how does the hijacking scam work? \u2013 Microsoft 365<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Learn how you can prevent SIM swapping, a method used by fraudsters to transfer your phone number to their SIM card and gain access to your online accounts.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"What is SIM swapping &amp; how does the hijacking scam work? \u2013 Microsoft 365\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Learn how you can prevent SIM swapping, a method used by fraudsters to transfer your phone number to their SIM card and gain access to your online accounts.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"https:\/\/m365contenthub.wpengine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/039-800x550-1.jpg\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What is SIM swapping & how does the hijacking scam work? \u2013 Microsoft 365","description":"Learn how you can prevent SIM swapping, a method used by fraudsters to transfer your phone number to their SIM card and gain access to your online accounts.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_title":"What is SIM swapping & how does the hijacking scam work? \u2013 Microsoft 365","twitter_description":"Learn how you can prevent SIM swapping, a method used by fraudsters to transfer your phone number to their SIM card and gain access to your online accounts.","twitter_image":"https:\/\/m365contenthub.wpengine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/039-800x550-1.jpg","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/privacy-and-safety\/what-is-sim-swapping","url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/privacy-and-safety\/what-is-sim-swapping","name":"What is SIM swapping & how does the hijacking scam work? \u2013 Microsoft 365","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/#website"},"datePublished":"2023-01-05T00:15:33+00:00","dateModified":"2024-08-27T05:31:28+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/#\/schema\/person\/2c23c19871398789718358887bd04035"},"description":"Learn how you can prevent SIM swapping, a method used by fraudsters to transfer your phone number to their SIM card and gain access to your online accounts.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/privacy-and-safety\/what-is-sim-swapping#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/privacy-and-safety\/what-is-sim-swapping"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/privacy-and-safety\/what-is-sim-swapping#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Microsoft 365 Life Hacks","item":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Privacy &amp; Safety","item":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/privacy-and-safety"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"What is SIM swapping &#038; how does the hijacking scam work?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/","name":"Everyday Life Hacks","description":"Just another Everday Hacks Sites site","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/#\/schema\/person\/2c23c19871398789718358887bd04035","name":"M365 Lifehacks","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8ca764838ccae7fc3be4511748247881?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/8ca764838ccae7fc3be4511748247881?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"M365 Lifehacks"},"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/author\/m365adm"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4182"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/microsoft-365-life-hacks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}