If someone nefarious has your full legal name and your phone number, can they wreak any havoc in our life with that info?
If someone nefarious has your full legal name and your phone number, can they wreak any havoc in our life with that info?
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Spoofing a number means they can call somebody and appears as calling from your number. In order to receive SMS or call made to your number, they would have to hijack your SIM, typically convincing your telecom provider to transfer your phone info over to theirs.
In the US, someone knowing your full name and phone number is commonplace. There is no wide-spead havoc because of this. Someone who wants to harm you would really have to be motivated to get more information from the info you gave them. This is obviously possible because of wide-spread data leaks, but does your emissary have the perseverance and the knowledge to do this?
There have been cases with Verizon where by simply stating your name and phone number they'll just ship anybody the victims sim card. Happened to h3h3. I think they've stopped that now but it's scary knowing your livelihood is at the whim of a min wage call center operator.
In terms of data leaks I've been really lucky, in part since I've been pretty proactive. Extremely careful to rarely give any info to any service, especially social security. Using haveibeenpwned.com will tell you if your info is involved in any data breaches.
Have I been pawned is really nice, but only includes confirmed data leaks. If you use other services like Google or Malwarebyte, they will tell you more leaks. I was involved with the MoveIt data leak from a financial institution recently, which basically leaked all the information that possibly can be partly/wholely used for identity theft. This didn't show up in HIBP. Fidelity Financial Life Insurance just leaked enough info via Infosys for another 30,000 customers with enough data for identity thefts recently.
In the US, it seems if somebody is able financially to aggregate all these sensitive data leaks, they probably can cause havocs to many people. These info often come from financial institutions, which you can't totally withhold or lie about your personal information.
And given that this info is relatively freely available, one's only protection is low probability of being chosen on random from a really long list of leaked accounts