With the arrival of smart phones into the market, everyone today is talking about internet on mobiles, mobile apps, 3G so on and so forth. However, SMS, a traditional short message service on mobile, even today is pretty much the most frequently used feature after voice calling.
The usage of SMS persists to grow every year with more novel ways of utilizing its potential coming to limelight. For sure, majority population of India, especially YOUNGISTAN, makes use of SMS more than calling. Apart from using it to keep in touch with acquaintances, it is used for variety of reasons, including mobile banking, checking and paying mobile bills, and status of train/flight etc to name a few.
Recent TRAI data shows that Indians are using SMS as an extension of their lives more and more every year, an average Indian sends 29 SMS per month. Just multiply that with number of ever growing Mobile subscribers in India and you will have an idea of amount of SMS traffic India generates!
But is the SMS channel safe?
Here is a recent case. Authorities from different states across the US are warning residents of the outbreak of a Text Message Scam. In the manner of other phishing scams, this new type of fraud tries to steal identities of people after contacting them on their mobile phones. Fraudsters who run this new mobile phishing scam send out SMS to thousands of cell phone numbers. Posing to be from their banks, the messages falsely inform the recipients that their account has been deactivated. It claims this was done as a precautionary measure as the bank had noticed several signs of suspicious activity in their accounts. The SMS phishing attack then asks users to call the bank at a given number in order to reactivate their accounts.
On calling, the account holders are asked to confirm their account details like account number and debit card number over the phone. This is just an attempt at phishing and those who do give away the required information find their accounts lighter by a few thousands.
So what you think, shall the SMS be secured?
