From The BBC:
There has been a rise in the number of mobile phone accounts being cloned or taken over by criminals, figures show.According to the UK fraud prevention service Cifas, the practice is one of the growth areas of identity theft. It has seen a 74% rise to 633 cases in the first half of the year, compared with the same period in 2008. After obtaining personal details by theft or deception, the fraudsters can add additional handsets to accounts and use them to run up large bills. Cifas members include banking, insurance and telecommunication firms. Richard Hurley from the service said: “In the first six months of 2008 we had 364 proven cases of accounts being taken over, and 899 by the year’s end. “In the first six months of this year we’ve confirmed 633 cases. “It is an area where the increasing sophistication of technology makes mobile phones a status symbol and therefore a boom area for fraud.” He said its latest figures may represent a fraction of the problem’s true scale as Cifas member…
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