On a more technical note, is there any safeguard against SIM swaps? Something like a fingerprint scan that's tied to your SIM. I'm not familiar with phone hardware at all but I'd love to hear if someone's working on this type of thing
The telco also needs a process to reclaim the number when you stop paying for it.
Often SIM swaps are done via porting the number to a different telco, and telcos are compelled to do ports in many jurisdictions.
If you're really worried about it, I guess you could look into what it takes to get a number block assigned to you as a competitive telco. That would likely be hard to get transfered out from under you, but the effort may not be worth it.
Also, if the price to get a sim swap is $1k (plus a % of ill gotten gains!), that's high enough to keep out untargetted attacks, IMHO, which isn't a terrible place to be.
You can be court ordered/forced to put your thumb on the home button.
You can’t be forced to remember a password you “forgot” ;)
We don't need to make shit worse.
Just to reiterate, I am personally a fan of maintaining anonymity, particularly online. I'm just concerned that our increasingly aging population won't be able to keep up with security best practices and we may need some braindead solutions to keep them safe.
So, a little more than $1k pp
The only solution is to refuse to use SMS for 2FA. If a service requires it, use a different service.
It's entirely possible some of the brighter ones have gotten their co-workers username/password combinations, and are using those when doing dodgy stuff.
There is. Some Russian banks detect when SIM identifier has changed and refuse to send SMS codes to a new SIM card.