SIM Swap Prevention Guide 2026: 5 Layers of Protection
You get a text from your carrier: “Your SIM has been transferred to a new device. Call us immediately if you didn’t request this.” By the time you finish reading, your phone goes dead. No signal, no texts, no calls. Someone else now gets those “reset password” codes — for your email, your bank, your crypto exchange. But here’s the reality: this isn’t a rare edge case. The FBI’s 2024 Internet Crime Report logged over 1,700 SIM swap complaints with losses exceeding $110 million. A recent r/privacy thread (189 upvotes, 112 comments) walks through exactly how accounts get drained in under an hour. ...