Alleged fraudsters mine data from stolen phones
Seven suspects have been caught for allegedly stealing people’s credit card information via loopholes in certain mobile apps, Shanghai police said on Tuesday.
The apps in question show users’ full identity card and credit card numbers, and thus were used by the suspects to use victims' credit cards after their phones were stolen, police said.
This case allegedly involved fraudulent charges worth over 1 million yuan (US$141,000).
Police in Huangpu District started their investigation in April after a bank reported that several of its credit card users came forward with fraudulent charges. Police found that all of the victims had their mobile phones stolen in Chengdu city, Sichuan Province.
Unknown people had also made calls to the bank and used accurate identity card information to reset account-access passwords, police said.
Through their investigation, police found that the suspects would load the SIM card of a stolen phone onto a new device, and log onto popular travel apps such as Qunar, Ctrip and eLong with a verification code on the SIM card if the owner of the number happened to have accounts on those apps. Police said these apps don’t require a username and password for log in.
Then, if the travel app user happened to have booked trips, those apps would show his or her full identity card information instead of hiding certain digits as many apps usually do. In this way, the suspects could have easy access to a user’s identity card number.
As for credit card information, the suspects had two main ways to obtain it. First, if the victim happened to have taken a picture of his credit card with the phone, even if the picture had been deleted, the suspects could use a readily available paid software to recover the deleted image. Also, if the victim happened to be using a credit card management app called 51 Credit Card Manager, the app shows full credit card numbers without hidden digits.
With a phone number, identity card number and credit card number, the suspects were allegedly able to execute credit card fraud, and the theft of such data took as little as half an hour in some instances, police said.
In this case, the suspects defrauded more than one bank and cashed in on the stolen cards by various means, according to the police.
The suspects were brought from Chengdu to Shanghai on the morning of September 6. Six of them are now under detention in Shanghai, and a seventh has been put on bail.
Police said the suspects are a loosely connected gang including phone thieves, identity card and credit card number thieves and those who cashed in on the stolen credit cards.
Huangpu police call on people who lost credit card access after losing their mobile phones in Chengdu to report their case.
Police said the case represents a new trend in credit card fraud in which stolen mobile phones are used to mine credit card data.
Police suggest that people who lose their phones should immediately deactivate their number via the telecom operator and also report the loss of their credit card.