Haseeb Awan on protecting crypto users from SIM swap attacks

0:00I'm Ashton Addison from event chain for investmentpitch media and FinTech news network and today on blockchain interviews we have Hasib a1 the CEO of a Fani Hasib welcome to the show is a pleasure to have you here today Anke I shouldn't for having me on the show you're very welcome let's start off the show by understanding a little bit more about you Fani why does it exist and how does

0:21it protect users personal privacy and their cellphones Thank You Ashton so the reason why we exist is because I was a victim of sim hacking four times I put all the measurements security measures on my account my pain account log port everything but I was still able to they were able to hack it was still able to hack me not one time before times so I said this

0:45probably need to be resolved because every person in crypto is a victim every major person I would say has been victim at some point it's like a metal loss it's like a bag that everyone is wearing right now that hey okay I got a victim I'd become a victim of this and still carriers were not able to fix it so I actually went to school for engineering

1:03so my degree is in telecommunication engineering and I have studied cyber security so I said okay you know I think I'm a victim I understand industry very well so why not set up a solution which is perfect so I came to us and I said okay I need to start up a company which is protects you against importing but when I started going into supporting I said there's

1:23other issues that are privacy and security that are not you know it's addressed by major carriers because number one it costs a lot of money to implement them for individual customers but also the market is very nice so we set up like a boutique wireless carrier where we work with all the major carriers and so you get all the kind of network that they have but at the same

1:45time we add privacy and security on tops and no one will know where you live who you made a call to where are you right now and is able to sense a few or do any kind of illegal transaction on your account mm-hmm that's great and that's much needed and there's a lot of people that still don't really understand what's importing and SIM swapping is but it is

2:06very important to know because obviously it's a similar form of hacking into your account and either getting your personal information or stealing your cryptocurrency funds but in a different way so can you explain to the people that aren't familiar what exactly is sim swapping and how does it happen sure so the comments it's getting very common right nowadays and the reason why

2:29people not reporting it because of the reason I'll tell you in a second that you know it's kind of a blackmailing issue that comes along and a lot of issues so first of all how the criminals operate so imagine you with KD of a you order XM from carrier B now if you put in telephone number your kid is actually selling that information or where you live in all kind of information

2:50so you just pay someone and they will legally and they will provide you information of that person so like imagine I want to say that where you live I just have to pay someone like it's incense and they will tell me where you live who you live with with your date of birth and and multiple other information that exposes you to do a potential identity theft

3:11so what they do is they will call a different carrier and they say hey I'm Ashton and you know I want to transfer this number to this service and they say ok you know what you need and you say hey this is my account number this is my zip code and everything and you'll transfer but no to a SIM card that you can get a criminal control and when the criminal control he will yo go on Gmail

3:31and do a password reset or any other email account like Facebook Twitter and start reviewing all those information by just having your telephone number because telephone number is the one that's listed as a secondary method for contact so within maybe like half an hour who have controlled all your social media account your financial institution X it's your account and then your crypto

3:53currencies or any other account you have so the first attack they do is they try to attack you financially so they will try to go into crypto exchanger if that's possible still over all the money then they will go into your bank account and try to drain your money as much as possible sometimes they transfer it offshore sometimes they do do it like buy crypto and transfer it so your

4:12multiple they do it in the second step they will go into your social media account and try to expect admin extract admin information as possible so they may hold your account hostage and try to steal your personal information and then they will ask for like you know ask for money and ransom and then give me this money I did it all your pictures or your priority messages

4:34on something so there are different kind of tracks so once a person is a time then he has to keep on paying every month to the person who hacked him Wow and all of this is because of the swapping through the carrier either porting the phone number or convincing somebody at the telecom company that you are them and you're impersonating somebody now should there be more

4:56accountability to the telecom companies where you know these infiltrations are happening a hundred percent where the same time you have to understand like you know telecom company the bear to facilitate a customer to they have a bigger mandate so I'll give you example like at any human day there are thousands of course that happen legally so if they put a check on every person

5:15who become it will clog their network so I'll give you example like imagine you say every person who goes through a domestic try it has to follow the same procedure than immigration you know yes it will stop a lot of domestic issues too but at the same time yeah it will call off convenience for average customers who legitimately want to transfer the number like in our case

5:35when we deal only deal with a very specific use cases – we don't serve everyone we are only for the top people and the reason like you know we don't serve average Kirke average consumer because we cannot serve them the way they want right we only work with like VIP celebrities in fluent opera – investor the people who care about their security because the procedure that we

5:56setup it will vary in convenor for every customer you set up so yes they should be accountable but at the same time I don't blame them because they're dealing with general public who actually does not even know how to put a sim card in their form mm-hmm yeah and you mentioned celebrities I was looking through your Twitter and just very recently Charlie

6:16Shrem who was a very early Bitcoin advocate and I'm sure he has lots of crypto funds and was targeted with this sim swap and you know in the middle of the night and was able and you were able to help him you know can you walk me through you know what happens Charlie sees some you know email on his phone saying you know you're being infiltrated he calls you and and how did

6:37you fight back and prevent these hacks from happening yes so Charlie the old friend of mine I'm an encrypted currency for almost seven seven eight years too so I know Charlie for a long time and so one day I think it was like three p3m at night and I got a text message from him that I bought sim soft right so I said okay I'll fix it for you and I was able to

7:00get the number back in like two three minutes maybe less than five minutes so we were able to get a number we do this pretty much every day three to four times that we are able to get numbers for people back we tell people to secure and secure service but a lot of time they just say hey I'll wait for it or wait for it and till one day they become a victim because good guys wait but that

7:22was doing with they're just looking for the opportunity to hack you and basically destroy you financially emotionally reputation arey in a specific case when he called me I basically was able to get back his SIM card we just I took control of his number I think within like five minutes and then I shipped him the SIM card the next day so this is quite a common

7:43practice that we do pretty much every day mm-hmm and so that's amazing that you were able to fix it so quickly and I've had personal experience with this sim swapping and going to you know the telecoms store and talking to the person trying to get it solved they seemed pretty clueless you know they really aren't aware of of what's going on and how to get your funds back right away

8:04and obviously it's very stressful if you're getting targeted and hacked and people are trying to steal your funds to be trying to you know every minute counts of trying to get your account back so to be able to do it within minutes is is impressive now there must be other preventative measures that can be taken you know to help protect people's privacy obviously using a fawni

8:26is going to be great but do you also have any general tips for people on you know how to try to not get sim swapped absolutely so there's no way a person can award sim swap obviously I'm biased because I use my service but literally we are expert in one specific thing we don't sell you on like Mickey Mouse plans like you know like Netflix you don't give yourself phone you don't say

8:48hey let's go for me or offer you this we only offer two things security and privacy optimize for anything else because we're expert at this thing we can we are well equipped to solve this problem with anything that has that happen at every second we believe that this attack is going to happen so we will prepared for it wear a journal public is not aware

9:08for that if you go to regular store they have a high shine rate of employees leaving them you know proper training and they're okay for 95% of the population and the other 5% 5% that's what we would reserve so for general people number-one thing is like you know telephone numbers are have more identity link to your telephone number than anything else that's like a journal rule

9:33right you know your social security number or SIM card in you a Canada we have it it doesn't have a lot of information like maybe your SIM card is shared with like three or four companies but the social your telephone number shared with pretty much everything yeah your doctor or your any online account or like bank or IRS or CRA in Canada so general tip is journal to pay that have

9:56two numbers you know and one number is for public and one number is only for 2fa that's a general thing you can download an app that you can do second thing is going to your account and turn on to a say for every possible company you have right you can go into pretty much every bank and and have an app based authentication like of–they google you authenticate or multiple like

10:16that use that never ever use your SMS or telephone for anything like that and these are janenn don't download like you know random apps on your phone and keep a path on your phone so these are general tips right don't change your password frequently like maybe every two months or every month or how frequently you can do it or even today like go into

10:37a five account and change a password mhm and set up to a PHA and that will prevent you from 90% of the attacks yeah definitely and for you know you mentioned that it's four or five percent of the population that are really at risk and a lot of people that are watching you know they're either considering getting into cryptocurrency or they have a small amount and you know

10:56they don't expect that they're not in the limelight showing off their their balances on the internet so maybe they don't have anything to worry about you know do those people need to worry about the sim swapping as well yes a 90% of customers actually non crypto which is actually interesting that I didn't have that thought that 90% of customer will be non crypto we have

11:17doctor the engineer lawyers accountants you know general public's too like we had been serving professionals to like I'll give you a simple example imagine someone have control over telephone number your social media MS in social media your facebook as Twitter and like you know the emails and any bank account what damage can they do if the answer is nothing then obviously you

11:41don't need to worry about it but the answer is yes then you know you need to worry about us worry about a lot of people say that the reason I mention about like top 5% is because of for the ability a lot of people looking for cheap yeah so that's that wanting that people look for so what companies do is they provide them cheap solution but at the same time they make them a product

11:59so I'll go to Ashton I'd say Ashton you know like this cell phone service is free but what I'll do is anyone who pay me like a duck $5 I'll give him like all your data usage which upstart are using which called who are you calling and then I can bombard you with the advertisement and I can this is what people do so they sell you so our theory is that top 5% may be able to afford you

12:23know they may be able to afford their price their freedom because freedom isn't cheap you know and I've said so that's the only theory and people say it's expensive so we say it's like education if you believe education expensive like try affording you know being ignorant or being uneducated it's a similar thing with security too if you believe if you

12:42cannot afford security right definitely you cannot afford breach yeah that's really interesting and we're running out of time but if there are viewers that are looking to learn more about protecting their cell phones their privacy and about you Fani what is the best way for them to reach out and to learn more the best part is to look at a Fani comm is e F a and I calm we also

13:07have got for people who don't want to switch or believe they are so we have free guards that you can visit and you can it will guide you on like how to secure self they also have a telephone number on website that they can call in if they're any question about that cell from privacy security but again as I said we don't serve 95% customer so yeah I did a

13:26likelihood chance that people call us may not be your customers mm-hmm that's great well I will leave the link to that in the description box below thank you so much for your time Hasib it's been a pleasure learning about this and all the best moving forward with the phony Thank You Ashton for having me called and again we are always open to help people

13:42thank you