AT&T Sued Over Crypto Thefts on Mobiles

| Publish date: 11/10/2018
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Silver Miller, the American crypto investor law firm, is suing telecom giants AT&T as well as T-Mobile for cryptocurrency thefts on mobiles using their networks.

SIM Swapping

Silver Miller filed arbitration charges on behalf of its client, a cryptocurrency investor, against AT&T because of SIM Swap-related thefts. According to the firm’s client, he was a victim of mobile thefts of his cryptos while he was using AT&T’s mobile network.

According to one of the documents (which was partially redacted later), Silver Miller’s client was robbed as a result of AT&T’s failures. The document stated that the firm’s client lost cryptocurrencies worth more than $621,000 due to a SIM Swap scam. This happened despite the fact that AT&T had assured their client that the company had increased its security system after he had complained about an earlier hack attempt.

SIM Swapping is also known as port-out scam. This involves a cell phone number being hijacked or stolen so that a user’s online financial and social media information can be accessed. This scamming technique has been made easier by the fact that a lot of companies today use automated messages or calls to manage customer authentication processes.

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Silver Miller also contends that the telecom behemoth is aware of the kind of harm that is done by SIM Swap scams, since AT&T had already issued “public advisories” warning its customers about the threat. The company had also issued public statements assuring its customers that they had out safeguards in place to ensure their customers were not victims of such scams.

In this lawsuit, AT&T has been accused of being a “co-conspirator” to these thefts, of being negligent, and exhibiting bad faith by being aware of the problem and not taking steps to protect its customers’ information.

Silver Miller stated that similar cases had been filed against T-Mobile on behalf of other clients who lost $400,000 and $250,000 respectively.

Lack of Safety

This is not the first time that a telecom provider has been sued by a cryptocurrency investor. Earlier this summer, Michael Terpin had sued AT&T for the same reasons, after having lost more than $24 million in SIM Swap scams while using the telecom giant’s network.

Terpin, a Blockchain entrepreneur and long-time crypto investor, stated that the challenge with dealing with cryptocurrencies was that not all of them could be kept in cold storage. Especially if the cryptos were staked, they needed to be kept in native wallets. This made them more vulnerable to attacks and therefore needed stronger gatekeepers to protect them. Which is what AT&T was supposed to have done.

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