Latest / CRYPTO 101 / Ep. 671 Sim Swap Protection with Efani: How to Keep Your Crypto Safe!

Transcript

Ep. 671 Sim Swap Protection with Efani: How to Keep Your Crypto Safe! · CRYPTO 101

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey guys, Tvo here just before the episode starts with a funny today.
0:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I just wanted to give you guys a quick note that a funny is all about sim swap protection and I know that you've probably heard their ads running on our program for a little bit now, but we wanted to actually bring them on the show to educate you about the sim swap protection, especially if you're in crypto it's important, but just overall security for your cell phone is really what they're all about too.
0:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're in crypto these days, it's basically a must.
0:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're going to get to learn all about that.
0:27
[SPEAKER_00]: But of course for the crypto one-on-one listeners, we wanted to bring you guys some alpha.
0:30
[SPEAKER_00]: So there is a special offer in this episode.
0:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to link to it below in the show notes, so check it out.
0:36
[SPEAKER_00]: But enjoy the episode.
0:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It's really in depth going around what a fawny does around sim swap protection, what can happen to you again in crypto, but also just in general for cell phone safety protection around sim swap protection with a fawny.
0:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, there's a special offer for this episode.
0:51
[SPEAKER_00]: The link is in the show notes below.
0:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Make sure you check it out and enjoy the episode.
1:04
[SPEAKER_05]: All right, everybody.
1:05
[SPEAKER_05]: Welcome back to another action packed episode here of the crypto one-on-one podcast.
1:10
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm your co-host, Bryce.
1:12
[SPEAKER_05]: I am so excited for our guest today.
1:15
[SPEAKER_05]: You guys have probably heard some ads for a funny running on the podcast.
1:20
[SPEAKER_05]: If you're a long time listener, we have Mark Kreitzman joining us, who's the general manager of a funny and
1:27
[SPEAKER_05]: We're going to bring him on and introduce him in just a bit.
1:29
[SPEAKER_05]: But we've got a special deal for listeners of the crypto one on one podcast.
1:34
[SPEAKER_05]: If you go to a funny dot com that's EFA and I dot com slash crypto one on one, you're going to be able to secure a ninety nine dollar off
1:45
[SPEAKER_05]: discount for a phony's services and we're going to be telling you all about why that is so important to have with you today.
1:54
[SPEAKER_05]: So Mark Kreitzman, general manager of a phony, thank you for joining us and how are you doing today?
2:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Doing awesome and thanks for the opportunity to build awareness around the issues that we're going to discuss today and as well as the phony.
2:07
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, it is a super, super important issue.
2:10
[SPEAKER_05]: I know people who have been impacted by hacks, particularly sim swaps.
2:16
[SPEAKER_05]: And so we always say here on the crypto one on podcast that it is really cool to make money, but what's just as cool and maybe even cooler is keeping your money and keeping it safe, particularly.
2:28
[SPEAKER_05]: So we all know about price risk with, you know, if you're investing in stocks or crypto, I mean, prices move up prices move down.
2:36
[SPEAKER_05]: But unlike stocks, you know, crypto is a little bit different because there's no recourse.
2:41
[SPEAKER_05]: If you get hacked, that money is out of your wallet.
2:43
[SPEAKER_05]: It's gone.
2:44
[SPEAKER_05]: You can't call up the CEO of Bitcoin and have them pause your funds.
2:48
[SPEAKER_05]: It's just gone.
2:49
[SPEAKER_05]: And so taking your protection seriously is the most, you know, the paramount sort of thing here that you want to make sure you secure.
2:57
[SPEAKER_05]: So we're bringing on Mark, thank you for joining to talk about this issue of sim swapping.
3:02
[SPEAKER_05]: But before we dive into that, let's just get acquainted, introduce yourself to our audience, who are you, and what inspired this mission of a fawny?
3:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, great questions.
3:13
[SPEAKER_01]: So Mark Kreitzman, I've been in cybersecurity since around two thousand and one.
3:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've worked for founders to build companies that were acquired by Microsoft and Cisco systems.
3:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And I got the crypto bug around two thousand seventeen.
3:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It's when I bought my first couple Bitcoin.
3:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And in two thousand seventeen and eighteen, I was building my own crypto project.
3:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was building an SDK with a friend of mine.
3:39
[SPEAKER_01]: What we could turn any mobile app into a crypto app literally in like an hour if you've got a good code or and I got hacked and so when I was driving to my parents house in Arizona Southern Arizona I got hit in the middle of the desert between Phoenix and Tucson.
3:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Somebody stole my mobile account away.
3:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I had I didn't know it at the time.
3:59
[SPEAKER_01]: I just knew that my mobile account had gone dead, and I became a hack victim.
4:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when I finally got to Wi-Fi at my parents house, six password resets one up my phone, my coin-based account got hit, a bank account did, wow, two cloud accounts, but six accounts in total.
4:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And at the time, I had two Bitcoin sitting in Coinbase.
4:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So at the time, I wasn't that much, you know, in the two thousand eighteen, it was
4:28
[SPEAKER_01]: uh, with somewhere around like three thousand of peace.
4:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And now I have to do the math.
4:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So every day, wake up.
4:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't do it.
4:34
[SPEAKER_05]: Mark, don't do it.
4:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and uh, and, you know, and so I had to try and catch up and buy.
4:39
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the time, I had no idea.
4:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I would have thought, I would have been happy if Bitcoin went to, you know, ten grand.
4:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and so I didn't fight it too hard at that time.
4:49
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's what's settered off is now I'm like, well, how did this happen to me?
4:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I've been cybersecurity for nineteen years at that time.
4:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I had everything set up properly.
4:58
[SPEAKER_01]: thought I was protected, my carrier let me down and it turns out I had to trick the carrier into them, telling me what happened.
5:07
[SPEAKER_01]: But it turns out that it was an employee at a third party phone store that just simply lied to a computer and Memphis Tennessee that I was standing there.
5:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, I was in California when I got, well, I was in Arizona, I got hit, but I was living in California.
5:20
[SPEAKER_01]: But somebody in Memphis Tennessee lied to a computer and they took my mobile account away for sixty-one minutes and then ported it back.
5:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So they tried to hide it.
5:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I didn't sleep for a couple of months.
5:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I found the only person on the planet that claimed they had solved it, which is our current founder and CEO.
5:38
[SPEAKER_01]: He happened to be in the process of building one of the larger Bitcoin ATM networks.
5:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And he had been hit multiple times.
5:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he had solved this for himself.
5:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a very expensive way to do it.
5:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I said, this is what I do.
5:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm so angry.
5:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't sleep.
5:55
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'd love to be part of this.
5:58
[SPEAKER_01]: The two of us sort of hit it off because we were both in the crypto and a little bit later on, the ledger hack happened and that's kind of where we got our first growth because once that hack happened, all of these people are getting spams and email and text messages, sim swaps, and we really took off at that point.
6:15
[SPEAKER_01]: We started hiring.
6:17
[SPEAKER_01]: So I got into a fawny because of pain.
6:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It's still sort of PTSD at this point.
6:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Like every day I wake up, I still have to kind of
6:26
[SPEAKER_01]: look at my accounts and look at everything still kind of paranoid and and uh you know not from my mobile side of things uh because of phony has that covered but uh yet the phony was started out of pain and uh one of the the famous sayings I saw um I think Elon Musk tweeted out recently but only the paranoid survived um and so I think you're right on there
6:47
[SPEAKER_05]: And I'm sorry that happened, that's really gut wrenching and I've heard plenty of stories about hacks and stuff.
6:53
[SPEAKER_05]: And people trust their carriers, right?
6:58
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm not going to name any names, but people trust all the big ones.
7:01
[SPEAKER_05]: It's kind of like the big bank, you're like, oh, nothing's ever going to go wrong if I'm with Verizon or Timo or whatever.
7:07
[SPEAKER_05]: Or just like, nothing's ever going to go wrong if I'm JP Morgan or Chase, right?
7:10
[SPEAKER_05]: These are like, you know, kind of
7:12
[SPEAKER_05]: similar in the sense of their institutions, they're infallible, but they're definitely not.
7:17
[SPEAKER_05]: And people set up security, you know, extra security in their accounts on their phones with a pin code or something like that.
7:25
[SPEAKER_05]: Why is that just not secure enough?
7:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
7:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, one is that these, so the, so the carriers are awesome, right?
7:31
[SPEAKER_01]: The mobile connectivity all around the world.
7:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So the tech is just how it works all, you know, it works all together.
7:38
[SPEAKER_01]: It's amazing.
7:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've been, you know, I worked for
7:41
[SPEAKER_01]: AT&T for ten years, myself, I worked inside the network of AT&T.
7:46
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, the carriers are awesome, but the problem is that they have too many holes.
7:50
[SPEAKER_01]: There's too many people that have too much power, just software-wise via just their computer and logging in.
7:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of people don't really realize that most of the mobile phone stores are actually independently owned.
8:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you're relying on them vetting their own employees, monitoring their own employees, and following all the processes.
8:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that somebody can't simply light a computer and say that the customer is standing there in front of them when they're, you know, thirty five hundred miles away.
8:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's the problem.
8:23
[SPEAKER_01]: They have call centers, huge call centers.
8:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, when you call and you verify that they could have a recording device on them, they could have camera in their glasses when you go into the store and record it.
8:34
[SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of the things that are happening with mobile hacks is because of insiders.
8:39
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like they've got a buddy that works in a phone store, they bribe somebody.
8:43
[SPEAKER_01]: The Brian Armstrong story that came out, like, you know, what was that two months ago?
8:47
[SPEAKER_05]: Where I was just gonna bring that up.
8:49
[SPEAKER_05]: When yeah, all the Coinbase customer support agents overseas got bribed.
8:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so they've been buying it.
8:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think I don't think it was recent.
8:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that they've been buying from Coinbase customer support probably for a couple of years, because a lot of the people that get hacked
9:05
[SPEAKER_01]: and then call a fawnie up.
9:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Most of them will end up coming to me because I want to learn about how they got since swapped or how do they get hacked.
9:15
[SPEAKER_01]: But in particular how they got since swapped.
9:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think that the Coinbase issue has been going on for years.
9:20
[SPEAKER_01]: But when they buy that information, then they're able to access people's Coinbase account with really out without social engineering if they can get enough information.
9:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, if Coinbase closes that down,
9:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Then what are these hackers going to do with that information?
9:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the next thing you're going to do is they're going to sim swap people.
9:40
[SPEAKER_01]: They're going to use that info to sim swap them.
9:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So when they go to hack coin base, it's not they don't have to social engineer coin base in order to take from their account.
9:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we believe that the these coin base data breaches wound up in other
9:55
[SPEAKER_01]: types of hacks like a sim swap.
9:56
[SPEAKER_01]: But every data breach that happens, it does result in sim swaps because people's information gets gets in the hackers hands.
10:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And a lot of people make mistakes.
10:08
[SPEAKER_01]: They use the same email for multiple accounts, like for their bank account, their crack in their Bitcoin base.
10:15
[SPEAKER_01]: They use that same email to send emails to family friends, sign up for websites.
10:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And they don't really think about the fact that they are
10:22
[SPEAKER_01]: basically publicizing half of their login, you know, it's the login, right?
10:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And so a lot of times what these hackers can do is, and just to educate people on how advanced like AI is, you know, we know it can clone voices and it can clone video and create avatars to people, but, you know, one of the easier things for AI is to discover like every email and every mobile number associated with you.
10:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've had this demoed for me where this guy
10:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So I proved it and I said, look, just zoom in.
10:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And it came up with emails that I haven't used in eight years, ten years came up with landlines that were from three houses ago.
11:03
[SPEAKER_01]: But identified one of my emails.
11:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought that I had not connected anything else that I had used on three different crypto accounts.
11:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Because at this point now, I spread everything out.
11:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I have multiple cold wallets, multiple exchanges.
11:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I barely keep anything on an online wallet anymore.
11:21
[SPEAKER_01]: but it discovered that email.
11:22
[SPEAKER_01]: So now it kind of gave me chills because I was like, I couldn't wait to get out the call because then I had to go run and change those emails.
11:29
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you think about how easy it is for somebody to go into Coinbase and then just type in the five emails associated with you and say, forgot password.
11:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And then what reaction does it get?
11:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So they can actually sort of prep themselves on you and then they would need, then they would know that if it says enter this, the number we just texted you
11:51
[SPEAKER_01]: then they know, okay, all I gotta do is simswap them.
11:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And so now you become a target.
11:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And if it says enter the six-digit authenticator app code, now they know I gotta simswap them, I gotta get into the email, I gotta get and reset their authenticator app.
12:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they can do prep work and it's just unfortunate that all these data breaches are happening.
12:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you guys heard about this,
12:17
[SPEAKER_01]: breach of like, sixteen billion logins and passwords that somebody stole from basically the servers from Apple, Google, Facebook.
12:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's the largest one in history.
12:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And that just happened in the last ninety days.
12:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you got to be very diligent.
12:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And as I said, data privacy's gone in the U.S.
12:45
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just
12:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything's been breached so many times that our information is out there.
12:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's upon us to protect ourselves, both for privacy and for security.
12:58
[SPEAKER_03]: We've talked about this term a couple of times already when it comes to simswap.
13:03
[SPEAKER_03]: Can you explain a little bit more about what a simswap is and how that happens?
13:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so pretty much anybody that is a mobile phone has done a legal sim swap.
13:15
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you have an iPhone, eleven today, and then you go into the store and you get the new iPhone XVI, and once they have that set up, you say, okay, I want to move my mobile service from my eleven to my XVI.
13:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the store can do that, right?
13:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's done from one iPhone to the next.
13:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's a legal one.
13:35
[SPEAKER_01]: The illegal, an illegal sim swap is where a nefarious person
13:40
[SPEAKER_01]: does that, except instead of sending it to your new phone, they're sending it to their phone.
13:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And it happens in the network.
13:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So some people will think that, well, you can't sim swap me because you have to steal my physical phone.
13:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Or you can't sim swap because I set up a what's called a sim pin lock on my phone.
13:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And the reality is is that the change is done in the network.
14:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if you're on a team mobile, for example, and on the hacker,
14:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And I want to go after Bryce.
14:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to convince or I'm going to bribe team mobile that I'm Bryce that I've lost my cell phone and I'm in emergency situation.
14:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I need my, I need the network to point the mobile account from the stolen phone over to the phone now in my hand.
14:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the reality is is that no matter how much you've invested on that device, it's no longer even in the equation.
14:34
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't pass where you put on your device.
14:37
[SPEAKER_01]: a facial recognition, thumbprint, any virus, all of that.
14:42
[SPEAKER_01]: That device is no longer in the equation, and Packers just don't care.
14:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So the mobile account for a price now pointed at this phone.
14:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So now I'm gonna go for got password, forgot password, forgot password, down the line, and see what I can break into.
14:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And if anything is just purely SMS, then I own it at that point.
15:03
[SPEAKER_01]: That happens to be an email, then I'm gonna
15:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Look through your email.
15:06
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to download the last two, three years of your email to make sure I've got some data.
15:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I can sell or hack you later on.
15:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to look for notifications of like our using duo or using Google Authenticator.
15:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Is there Coinbase, Bitfinex?
15:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Any, you know, any exchange and now and so really, really quickly I can really target in on where I want to try and hit you.
15:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Are certain devices or providers better than others at preventing this?
15:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, my immediate thought goes to like, are all providers and networks and devices created equal where maybe an iPhone safer than an Android or maybe Verizon safer than AT&T?
15:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, is there a scenario like that?
15:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Or is it just like, everyone's at risk of this?
15:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you are someone that has a substantial net worth or a position of profit of a substantial like importance, then you're just at risk of this.
16:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's a great question.
16:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So you could buy a military phone built by design by NASA.
16:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And if it's got a regular carrier connected to it, it doesn't matter.
16:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Because the device has just taken out of the equation.
16:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So in terms of the sim swap, it doesn't matter whether it's an iPhone,
16:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Android, graphing OS.
16:26
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, we've partnered with four different secure phone providers.
16:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And they come to us because they say the same thing, which is we've got this incredibly secure phone.
16:37
[SPEAKER_01]: We believe it's the most secure phone on the planet.
16:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And it'll be something based on graphing OS or where another custom version of that.
16:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And but they all say the same thing, which is it's super secure until you put a sim or an e-sim in it.
16:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And we have no control over that.
16:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they want to partner with us.
16:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we partnered with above phone.
16:57
[SPEAKER_01]: For example, they sell a graphing OS phone.
16:59
[SPEAKER_01]: We partnered with Mark thirty seven.
17:01
[SPEAKER_01]: They sell the ghost phone.
17:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And so in terms of the sim swapping, yeah, it doesn't really matter.
17:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
17:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there are benefits of like a graphing OS phone for other security because a funny provides sim swapping, but
17:18
[SPEAKER_01]: But we also help with privacy and we also help with some of the network attacks as part of our standard service.
17:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So as I talked about before, one of the holes in the carriers is the phone stores.
17:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when you buy mobile service from a funny, so we resell AT&T and Verizon.
17:36
[SPEAKER_01]: But so when you buy AT&T from a funny, we don't tell AT&T who this person is.
17:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Your address, your birthday, your Social Security,
17:47
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, if you think about it, you basically have a credit account with these carriers if you're direct with them.
17:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And so our customers have basically information about a fawny or we have multiple addresses, for example, so those will be in the account most likely.
18:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there's privacy from prime eyes, but there are also some network things that we do as well.
18:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And so a fawny plus like an above phone,
18:15
[SPEAKER_01]: is this pretty strong combination.
18:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It's stronger than a funny plus of the iPhone.
18:22
[SPEAKER_05]: Interesting.
18:23
[SPEAKER_05]: And so like when people are listening to this, they might be thinking two things.
18:28
[SPEAKER_05]: One, wow, I had no idea that all these security vulnerabilities exist.
18:33
[SPEAKER_05]: I'm exposed.
18:35
[SPEAKER_05]: You know, how do I, you know, cover up these holes?
18:38
[SPEAKER_05]: But the number two is like, if I'm not going to trust
18:42
[SPEAKER_05]: carrier, you know, the big four carriers that I'm going to have to trust a funny and make sure that a funny are good actors and and so tell us a little bit about you know why we can trust a funny and what makes you guys different.
18:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so one is a funny is founded by victims and so this is more than a business there it's a you know there's a passion around doing this.
19:06
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I would have never woken up otherwise and thought like, well, I want to start selling mobile service.
19:12
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's, you know, it came out of that pain.
19:16
[SPEAKER_01]: The other thing too is we back up our service with a five million dollar insurance policy.
19:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And the easiest way to explain our businesses that we provide mobile service.
19:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're going to protect that insurance policy from ever being utilized.
19:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And therefore, the customer gets protected by that.
19:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And so far, we started in two thousand eighteen, and we've had zero sim swaps.
19:40
[SPEAKER_01]: We have thousands of customers, you know, fifteen percent of our customers are like who's who.
19:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we've got customers that are part of Hollywood, professional athletes, a lot of like head.
19:54
[SPEAKER_01]: We have hedge funds now, family offices, so we've got consumers and businesses.
20:00
[SPEAKER_01]: A family offices are getting, they're starting to invest in cryptos.
20:03
[SPEAKER_01]: They're becoming targets.
20:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that five million dollar insurance policy is our reputation.
20:09
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the value of the company and we're going to make sure that that never gets utilized.
20:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And other than that, it's, we're paranoid people and we live with PTSD and we don't want anybody else to ever go through this and we talk to victims
20:28
[SPEAKER_01]: all the time that unfortunately their victims before they come to a fawny and and it's painful to hear their story and a lot of times they just want to tell their story.
20:39
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah and so to give us a little bit of you know more you know
20:45
[SPEAKER_05]: detailed understanding of how the system works, so that we could have the more knowledge we have, the less fear we have.
20:53
[SPEAKER_05]: And so does a funny, you know, I like walk me through the process, I go, I sign up for a funny, a funny takes all my personal information and then does what with it and how do I end up with the cell phone at the end of it?
21:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so a couple key things is that I want to clarify, because people picture a funny is having like data centers and racks of servers
21:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and all this elaborate stuff going on.
21:17
[SPEAKER_01]: But the reality is is that what we've actually done is we've stripped all the tech out of it.
21:22
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're selling you a mobile service like AT&T and we're not selling your data.
21:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And the only data we do collect is the payment information and you can pay and you can't pay with stable coins on our website so you can do that anonymously and collecting verification information.
21:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the only thing we're collecting.
21:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're not collecting call records, SMS records, any kind of view switch, because that's a liability.
21:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And so somebody's collecting that, right?
21:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So a font is under what's called what's a clear law.
21:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It's federal laws.
21:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So you never want to use a mobile service that's not following federal laws, because they may just disappear one day.
22:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So the data is collected is required to be collected by the carriers.
22:07
[SPEAKER_01]: They're just collecting data that's anonymous to them.
22:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And so if somebody is a customer of ours and they call us up and they said, can I have my call record for the last thirty days?
22:20
[SPEAKER_01]: The process would be is that they have to formally request it.
22:23
[SPEAKER_01]: We then make the request and then gather that information and provide it to the customer.
22:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the carry would provide it really without like your name, your personal information attached.
22:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And we don't, we never take birth day, we never take social security or anything like that.
22:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So we just view the more that we would collect to be liability.
22:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So we just don't, we just don't want the information.
22:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And in terms of our service, we had to describe the mobile industry is that
22:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Every reseller wholesaler store out there, we all have portals that allow you to move customers around.
23:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So if like you wanted to move to a funny, then we just need a couple of bits of information like the account number, the mobile number, and a temporary transfer pin.
23:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And we can go into our portal and port your number over without having to talk to your carrier, and you don't have to talk to your carrier.
23:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And it sounds wonderful, but what the mobile industry has done is they have made it super cheap for you to leave.
23:28
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like, okay, well, if you're going to leave my mobile service, then I don't want to, I don't want to waste time talking to you.
23:33
[SPEAKER_01]: You just, here's the information, you know, go do it.
23:35
[SPEAKER_05]: It's smart.
23:36
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's the scary part about it is, and that's why it's so, these sim swaps are so easy.
23:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if I borrowed your phone, yeah, I'll get an emergency.
23:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I borrowed your phone, like, you're on Verizon, for example, and I'm looking at my phone, and I hit pound, a couple of numbers pound.
23:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's going to text me back a temporary transfer pin.
23:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
23:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Now I'm going to delete that, pretend like I called somebody handed it back to you and say thanks a lot.
23:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Now I can just layer to that evening and go and then sim swap you because I have the temporary transfer pin.
24:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Holy shit.
24:04
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so I would need the count number in your mobile number, but most likely I might already have that, but I would get it somehow.
24:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is the way the industry's build is that my call at the mobile API matrix.
24:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when you pour your number over to a fawny, we're unplugging you from that.
24:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's not that easy to port out.
24:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So when somebody wants to port out, we go through eleven layers of verification, a couple of those layers of things that they don't see.
24:34
[SPEAKER_01]: But the obvious ones, and we don't want to publicize the ones.
24:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
24:38
[SPEAKER_04]: Because they don't give away the secret sauce.
24:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
24:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And we change them around.
24:41
[SPEAKER_01]: We do it in different orders.
24:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And part of it depends on what kind of answer they gave to ones that may change.
24:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But some things are obvious, like what email do we have for you on file?
24:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, you don't confirm whether they got it right or wrong, usually.
24:56
[SPEAKER_01]: But we may send an email to that and say, can you please tell me what that email says or can you respond back to it?
25:03
[SPEAKER_01]: If they respond back to it, that may be something that we look at hidden header information on it, things like that.
25:09
[SPEAKER_01]: What's your payment method?
25:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And we may do something like send a credit to the credit card on file and say you have to verify that.
25:18
[SPEAKER_01]: When you do port out, it's a
25:20
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a cooling off, it's a two week cooling off period.
25:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So when somebody wants to pour it out, they just tell us and then there's this two week period where somebody would have to fake being that person for two weeks.
25:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's only like five, ten minutes of total effort for the person to go through this process.
25:36
[SPEAKER_01]: But the two week cooling off period is that last resort, because if you want to go fishing in Canada and you're out where there's no phone for like ten days and when you come back, right, you want to make sure your phone's still there.
25:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's not meant to be difficult.
25:52
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really just meant to make sure that we never release somebody's number to the wrong person.
26:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And so everything we do for verification is human.
26:04
[SPEAKER_01]: To do it any other way is it's just kind of scary.
26:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And because AI is getting very, very good.
26:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And we also allow customers to create their own step too.
26:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they can create a pass phrase.
26:19
[SPEAKER_01]: They could have a second email account that says, like, this physical device, like a UB key here's something maybe.
26:26
[SPEAKER_01]: So we would not be a UB key.
26:28
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, we allow UB keys on your customer account.
26:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And we do recommend, so people have to use an authenticator app or UB key on their account with the funny.
26:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And certainly being able to log into your account is potentially one of those ways to be able to verify yourself.
26:46
[SPEAKER_01]: But that, that is the key.
26:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, we've stripped the tech out.
26:49
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't, we don't give free Hulu, free Disney+, Netflix, whatever exists these days.
26:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Because that's data collection, data profiling.
26:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're really trying to limit the exposure of people's personal information and the ability to, or somebody to social engineer.
27:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, you know, this is interesting because over here, we're always talking about risk management and risk mitigation and, you know, protect yourself from downside in your portfolios and your trades and this and that.
27:21
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you think about it, you know, this is really just another form of risk management, but specifically when it comes to the security side.
27:29
[SPEAKER_03]: And it's arguably one of the most important areas of crypto.
27:33
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, Bryce, you said this at the top of the hour, but when it comes to keeping your crypto safe, like that is such a crucial part of this is not just protecting your portfolio from downside, but you know what's the ultimate downside?
27:47
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not a pullback.
27:48
[SPEAKER_03]: It's not a market crash.
27:50
[SPEAKER_03]: It's your entire portfolio going to poop overnight.
27:53
[SPEAKER_03]: and someone getting access to things that they shouldn't.
27:56
[SPEAKER_03]: So this is really a more honed in view of taking risk management to the proper level, especially to people who have any kind of sizable account.
28:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And even for us, we promote using cold storage and certainly our message is different for the crypto people than the non-crypto.
28:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Because even if you're not into crypto, you can still be a target.
28:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And just because they can't get into your cold storage, doesn't mean you're not a target.
28:24
[SPEAKER_01]: They get into your eye cloud, your email, still do devastating things for you.
28:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I have to, when they got into one of my emails, I have to think about it every day of like, did they get tax records?
28:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Did they get medical records?
28:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Did they see early, wired distributions and things like that?
28:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, yeah, you just, crypto is very painful when it's strong because it's basically gone.
28:52
[SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, there's all the other things that can happen to you as well.
28:57
[SPEAKER_01]: I talked to people that have been blackmailed and, you know, just like their eye cloud account.
29:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And they call up and they're like, I got hacked and they think that we're some kind of expert and, you know, blackmail procedures and
29:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And do they have to worry and say, well, let's get you on a fawnie to start with.
29:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's all kinds of reasons people are getting sim swapped.
29:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it's harassment, sometimes it's ex-boyfriends.
29:22
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of people claiming that their spouses, their ex spouses are gone after them.
29:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's not always about crypto, but losing that crypto is painful.
29:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And then also one thing that people don't realize is that
29:38
[SPEAKER_01]: all the carriers have slipped in arbitration clauses.
29:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you get SimSwaped and you lose say a hundred thousand of Bitcoin out of your Coinbase account, then you want to sue somebody.
29:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And what you're going to find is that it's you're going to have to go to arbitration court and you're going to the odds of winning are probably greater than fifty percent, but you're going to get about thirty percent on the dollar.
30:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, after you're going to pay your attorney out of that.
30:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And the carriers defense, well, I've been asked to be an expert witness multiple times.
30:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've never said no, excuse me, I've never said yes, because I don't want to go against the carriers that were, you know, partnering with.
30:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And we, and we partner with, we sell all of them in some way.
30:24
[SPEAKER_01]: But the attorneys are telling me that the carriers defenses that this has been normalized.
30:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And that happens every carrier and therefore because it's normalized, we shouldn't have to pay a hundred percent.
30:38
[SPEAKER_01]: People need to be aware of this and secure themselves.
30:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's why this sort of thirty percent win rate is the way it is, is because the judges get convinced that it's a normalized issue.
30:52
[SPEAKER_05]: And I'm curious, you know, so the security aspect is huge, which we all get.
30:59
[SPEAKER_05]: But are there other benefits like, you know, like you said you partner with all these different partners?
31:04
[SPEAKER_05]: Safe for instance, I'm on one network.
31:05
[SPEAKER_05]: Now I'm in a dead zone and I can't get any service, but sometimes like, you know, my wife, if she has a different cell phone provider, like, oh, well, she'll have service.
31:13
[SPEAKER_05]: It's like, I wish I had one carrier that connected to all the different services is, and it sounds like that's kind of what a faunee's doing, but I don't want to jump to conclusions.
31:22
[SPEAKER_01]: No, that's a great question.
31:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And that was going to be the next thing I wanted to throw in, which is we now officially launched our dual SIM decim setup.
31:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's say you get AT&T's, your primary carrier with the funny.
31:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So your SIM one's going to be AT&T.
31:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's going to be voice SMS and data.
31:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we also provide you with a second data only SIM.
31:46
[SPEAKER_01]: It would be an eSIM.
31:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's a second data only eSIM, and it roams across
31:51
[SPEAKER_01]: almost five hundred carriers around the world.
31:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow.
31:54
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you're in the, if you're in the US, if you were in say San Diego, you might be using AT&T data and then you hit Newport Beach and it's Verizon and then you hit Carmel or something and it's T Mobile and so it switches around.
32:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So that we, we rolled this out.
32:12
[SPEAKER_01]: We tested it with about two or three hundred of our customers and basically they said this is like a game changer.
32:18
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the teams that just signed up with us is a team in southern part of U.S.
32:26
[SPEAKER_01]: that does operations in Mexico and Central America.
32:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can't talk about the details.
32:33
[SPEAKER_01]: But they they trialed us and they went into Mexico and they were using ATT direct and they also had all their phones were using ATT direct and they had one phone set up with
32:45
[SPEAKER_01]: AT&T fawny, and then this second data east end was roaming, and they said, again, there were another one that said, this is a game changer because we lost AT&T connectivity in Mexico, and the data east end picked up too.
33:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they picked up two other carriers, and we're able to stay in communication.
33:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So this, it works that way all over the world.
33:07
[SPEAKER_01]: If you went to Thailand, you'd roam on true Detac, AIS, Australia, wherever you're going to go, it's going to roam on three to four carriers,
33:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And it will serve LTE, five G, if it's being served wherever you are in the world.
33:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And we give also ten gigabytes of free international data roaming as part of our price.
33:29
[SPEAKER_04]: That was my next question was I was like, there's got to be a catch there because international is always no offensive.
33:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so if you have ATT with this again, and you fly to El Salvador, you go to Bitcoin Beach.
33:41
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to have ten gigabytes.
33:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's going to roam on three or four carriers there.
33:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And you go to Bali, Indonesia, same thing.
33:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what we're trying to provide is global connectivity that gives you this sim swap protection and the privacy from all the stores and resellers and from the prime and eyes.
34:02
[SPEAKER_01]: Now,
34:03
[SPEAKER_01]: We also enable Wi-Fi calling globally.
34:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you were to go to Bitcoin Beach again in El Salvador, you're gonna get the free data, but you're also, if you're behind Wi-Fi, if somebody were to call your mobile number, it's gonna ring and you can talk for free.
34:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can also call back to the US for free.
34:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So when you're behind a Wi-Fi, your phone acts as if you're sitting in the US.
34:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's no additional cost.
34:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And then for those people that have an iPhone XIII or above, because of fawny enables all these features, the iPhone XIII and above in the new iOS, they've added this feature that allows us to do the Wi-Fi calling over the second data eSIM.
34:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And so now, if you've got an iPhone XV and you go to El Salvador, you don't even need a Wi-Fi connection.
34:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It's no additional cost.
34:54
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to be able to make phone calls back to the U.S., you're going to be able to receive
34:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And then for fifteen dollars a month, you can join our world calling plan.
35:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And that way, if you're a Bitcoin beach, you can make local calls, you can call Spain, Germany, all over the world, and there's no additional costs.
35:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you've got the iPhone thirteen and above, and you travel outside the US a couple times, that we're an absolute no-brainer.
35:18
[SPEAKER_01]: In that case, like even if you don't even, if you don't even own any crypto, it's like seamless, it works.
35:25
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got hedge funds that have people that
35:28
[SPEAKER_01]: have employees from Cayman Islands to US, Canada, Australia, Bali.
35:34
[SPEAKER_01]: They're US, like crypto hedge fund.
35:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And they all want US mobile numbers.
35:38
[SPEAKER_01]: They all get the iPhone thirteen and above.
35:40
[SPEAKER_01]: They use our dual e-syn strategy.
35:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And they all operate as if they are in the US since a beautiful solution and to keep some secure.
35:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a couple of things just sort of kind of get into the nerdy type tack.
35:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know if you guys have ever heard of like Seltower Spoofing and Hanzi Catchers and things like that.
36:01
[SPEAKER_05]: I've heard of the Spoofing for the Seltower as we're the Spoofing of the Wi-Fi, where basically people set up fake hot spots and you're like, oh, I'm at the airport, let me connect to airport Wi-Fi, not realizing some random hacker renamed a hot spot airport Wi-Fi and anything you connect to, he's gonna be able to get your info.
36:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you definitely have to watch out for that like Wi-Fi anywhere in the world.
36:21
[SPEAKER_01]: do a denial assert, yeah, it is duplicate the Wi-Fi network, right?
36:24
[SPEAKER_01]: You can just call it the same name and then denial of service on the on the original, you know, Starbucks cafe or something and then capture that.
36:33
[SPEAKER_01]: But sell tower spoofing works the same way, except that they can be, you know, hundred meters away, possibly even more, if they've got a strong enough, himsy catcher.
36:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, the himsy catchers are dangerous on two G and three G networks.
36:46
[SPEAKER_01]: So the reason we resell AT&T and Verizon from the beginning is
36:51
[SPEAKER_01]: because they turned off their two G and three G network.
36:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you can't use these cell towers poofers to lower, to downgrade you to the two G, three G, because there's nowhere to go.
37:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you're gonna stay on that four G, L, T, five G, and you're gonna have more protection from these cell towers poofing.
37:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And the only thing that could possibly do, and this goes for any carrier, because you can't mask the MZ number and the IMEA, when you wake up a phone, it has to
37:21
[SPEAKER_01]: transmit the information of the salt towers to say who it is.
37:24
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, this is my, MZ numbers is my MAID and every carrier works the same way the first time it boots up.
37:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So that could capture the MZ number, for example, and the MZ number would tell them what country, what carrier and the rest of it's, they're the individual identifier.
37:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And then if they get buddies at the carrier, then they can call them up and say who owns this MZ number.
37:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's one of the reasons why privacy out these stores and with their call centers, not having your full information is very helpful.
37:57
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why the privacy in those stores matters.
38:00
[SPEAKER_01]: big time, man.
38:02
[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, what is something like this cost?
38:04
[SPEAKER_05]: We haven't even talked really about much costs overall, but I think, you know, people listening, they're like, man, they got a bunch of high net worth individuals that use this hedge fund managers.
38:12
[SPEAKER_05]: This is probably something that thousands of dollars a month for this level of security.
38:16
[SPEAKER_05]: What kind of is the cost structure here?
38:20
[SPEAKER_01]: The nine and nine dollars.
38:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And then go through the process of getting an activated your second month is going to be free.
38:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we also give a sixty-day money back guarantee.
38:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So on the sixtieth day, if you're like, you know what, you didn't satisfy me, then you get your money, you get that nine and nine dollars you pay back.
38:38
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
38:39
[SPEAKER_05]: And yes, for everybody listening that is eFony, EFA and I dot com slash crypto one o one.
38:47
[SPEAKER_05]: And again, we'll link that to the show notes.
38:49
[SPEAKER_05]: All you got to do is click it from your computer, your laptop wherever you can type it into a URL again.
38:54
[SPEAKER_05]: That's eFony, EFA and I dot com slash crypto one o one.
39:01
[SPEAKER_05]: Mark, I mean, this is incredible and I think people who are listening are excited and maybe even curious if there's any war stories or crazy stories of like, you guys in the trenches fighting off a hack or any, you know, stories from your customers that you could share with us how successful this platform has been.
39:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, a couple, I'll share one story, which a lot of people don't realize is that you remember when the Bitcoin ETF was announced early?
39:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, I remember that.
39:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
39:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was a, for the Etsy series of, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh
39:54
[SPEAKER_01]: Just, that's crazy, right?
39:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah.
39:56
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you think about the hundreds of millions, it's not billions that were won and lost that day.
40:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, if you were the person that could control that.
40:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, that's kind of crazy.
40:07
[SPEAKER_01]: So, in terms of us being in the head of the battle, so, you know, we've never had anybody get even close to executing a sim swap on us.
40:17
[SPEAKER_01]: But what we have done is participated in people in the middle of getting a sim swap.
40:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And we have jumped in and on their carrier and we're able to grab their mobile number back to a fawny.
40:30
[SPEAKER_01]: And so yeah, you can, you can be scariest in P and P love no idea they're trying to call their carrier trying to call Verizon Verizon doesn't want to help them because they go into
40:42
[SPEAKER_01]: liability protection.
40:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So they call us up and they're like, I'm not a customer, but I'm being Simpswap like right now.
40:47
[SPEAKER_05]: And I'll be a customer for life if you could get me off of this Simpswap right now.
40:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
40:52
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
40:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
40:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
40:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Basically, that's kind of, that's, that's what happens.
40:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of those stories was Charlie Schram.
40:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow.
40:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And so early on, when we were, when we were pretty young Charlie Schram was in the middle of getting a Simpswap, he wasn't a funny customer.
41:07
[SPEAKER_01]: He was direct with the carrier.
41:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And this was happening at like one or two in the morning.
41:12
[SPEAKER_01]: and he called up and at the time I was only three of us who were still young and our CEO found her jumped in and was able to pull his number back and then Charlie became a supporter of ours and invited our CEO on his podcast he talked about us a number of times and so there's been a number of cases like that.
41:36
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't want to rely on it because when you call in it's like depends on who's
41:42
[SPEAKER_01]: active at that time, right?
41:43
[SPEAKER_05]: Cause you want to be preventative, not reactive in this.
41:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we can't ever commit that that we can do that every time.
41:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And things get crazy like we had one guy calling, who said that he was on Verizon, he gets since swapped.
41:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And it took him, he said it took him about thirty minutes to get to a phone.
42:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Then calls Verizon and he says like, hey, I think my mobile accounts been stolen away and he gives him the number and they're like, oh, we don't even own that mobile number.
42:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, what do you mean?
42:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been a customer of yours.
42:12
[SPEAKER_01]: for like ten years.
42:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And Verizon, when they go into liability protection mode, Verizon wasn't even able to tell him what carrier I got ordered to.
42:23
[SPEAKER_01]: So somebody stole his number.
42:25
[SPEAKER_01]: They stole his number.
42:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So somebody else stole it as a Verizon account and then we've been in that time period of being able to call.
42:31
[SPEAKER_01]: He's switched it to another carrier.
42:33
[SPEAKER_01]: So he called AT&T.
42:34
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't own it.
42:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And this was right before Team Oble and Sprint had finalized the manager, their merger.
42:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And Team Oble said they didn't have it.
42:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And Sprint said, yeah, that's our number, but you're not the owner of it.
42:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he took him like seven days and he used to tell me about how he had to chase his accounts for a week of keep changing passwords and things like that.
43:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And so these are the kind of things that can happen.
43:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I had it.
43:06
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a month there where I had a number of people calling in saying they got sims swapped.
43:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And they said that they would get a text on their phone that says, we're gonna do this port change over, like, press here or something if you, if you didn't approve this.
43:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And then all sudden it would just like so many text messages you would just come pouring in and they're sitting or trying to scroll back to that.
43:31
[SPEAKER_01]: And so these hackers find out unique and different ways to
43:36
[SPEAKER_01]: bypass their procedures and it's like they put up and they'll put up a new one and then they just figure out how to get around it.
43:43
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the popular ones now is they'll go into, like I can go into a phone store.
43:47
[SPEAKER_01]: If I know what carrier you guys use, I can go into their phone store and then pretend I'm going to buy a phone and use that incentive of buying the phone to get them to sort of soften up because I'm not doing a sims swap.
44:01
[SPEAKER_01]: All I want to do is buy a phone off of your account.
44:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And let's say they're like, oh, we can't verify you if you don't have your birthday.
44:08
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm going to walk out of the store.
44:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to go get your birthday, go to the next store.
44:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm going to figure out over time, how can I get verified by you or in your name.
44:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And then once I get a phone in your off your account, then I call back later and say, oh, you know what?
44:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I got this new phone and of course it's going to be on your account.
44:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Through that process, I might have added another email.
44:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I might have added something to it.
44:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I'm actually verifying, I'm verifying real information.
44:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's no longer social engineering at that point.
44:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a great video from DefCon where this expert social engineer took over, took control over the reporters, mobile number, live on TV.
44:54
[SPEAKER_01]: But once you, if you can get a phone in somebody else's name, then it
44:59
[SPEAKER_01]: It becomes not really a sim swap.
45:01
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like you call them up.
45:02
[SPEAKER_01]: You're calling them from a phone.
45:03
[SPEAKER_01]: They see the IMEA device on your account.
45:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So now I want to switch this phone number over to my new phone.
45:09
[SPEAKER_03]: The whole thing's eye opening.
45:11
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it really is.
45:12
[SPEAKER_03]: And when we think about like traditional production, it's like make sure you put your seed phrase on a piece of paper and not in your email and make sure you don't like
45:22
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, do silly things.
45:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And this is one of those where it's, it's seriously entirely outside of your control.
45:28
[SPEAKER_03]: If someone wants to come after you, it really doesn't matter to an extent, right?
45:34
[SPEAKER_03]: Unless you're like, with a fawnier, with something like this, there's very little, it seems like you can do as an independent, right?
45:41
[SPEAKER_03]: If you're just going to say, I'm going to take precautions.
45:43
[SPEAKER_03]: It seems like that that's really not going to be enough.
45:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And if someone wants to come after you and do this and you don't have a service for a protection like this, then you're kind of just at the will and mercy of like hoping it doesn't happen or or it just does.
45:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Like again, it's just not it doesn't seem like there's a lot that can protect you.
46:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, Prince Princeton did a study on this and anybody can Google it, but they they created fifty accounts.
46:08
[SPEAKER_01]: They had a time period.
46:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they went and they sim swapped thirty nine of those fifty accounts.
46:15
[SPEAKER_01]: They did it across the top five carriers in the U.S.
46:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And the only reason they didn't get more is because the time period ended.
46:24
[SPEAKER_01]: But even for the ones that they didn't get sim swapped at that time when it ended, they got start day birth dates information that was given on these accounts.
46:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So one set of people set up the accounts and another set of people comes in
46:40
[SPEAKER_01]: and then attempts to sim swap them.
46:42
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's like a seventy nine point, you know, eight percent rate of successful sim swaps.
46:49
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, the only thing really in our favor is now is that there's so many people that own crypto.
46:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there's so many of us that that helps kind of protect us.
47:03
[SPEAKER_01]: But on the downside is if I was a sim swap hacker and I was pretty serious, like I'm going to go to the Bitcoin Conference Miami.
47:10
[SPEAKER_01]: trade business cards, because everybody hands out their mobile number.
47:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And there what's happened and all of that.
47:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And so people don't really think about the fact that their mobile numbers now more important than their Social Security number.
47:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Because once your crypto stolen, they have the ability to hide it.
47:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And transfers.
47:35
[SPEAKER_05]: Um, I'm hopeful that, um, you know, these are always like brands that I think you said a great eye opening, right?
47:41
[SPEAKER_05]: Like that's like, that's the perfect, you know, name to encapsulate what this discussion has.
47:47
[SPEAKER_05]: But I hope it's eye opening and then the, the second reaction isn't fear and, and paralysis and I'm not going to do anything, but it's
47:55
[SPEAKER_05]: I opening and then your reaction is, wow, I need to do something about this.
47:58
[SPEAKER_05]: And so hopefully everybody listening, you know, really does at least at the very least, just go to a fawny.com, check it out, get to know more.
48:09
[SPEAKER_05]: And we would be very appreciative of you used that code if you sign up, crypto, one-o-one.
48:15
[SPEAKER_05]: But Mark, I really am hopeful that folks listen to this and they don't get scared into paralysis, but they get scared into action.
48:24
[SPEAKER_05]: And I think we did a great job of kind of sparing that on.
48:27
[SPEAKER_05]: Is there anything that we didn't mention yet about a fawny, what you're working on, anything you want the viewers to leave with as we part today?
48:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so we're going to always continue investing in more security on the mobile side.
48:39
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're going to, we're the,
48:42
[SPEAKER_01]: cellular security geeks, so to say.
48:45
[SPEAKER_01]: We are going to come out with, by the end of this year, what we call black seal.
48:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's going to be a premium service.
48:53
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to add even more security and more privacy to people's mobile phones.
48:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And beyond that, just a couple things that people need to not do.
49:03
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, like I said before, don't
49:08
[SPEAKER_01]: set up your login for your exchanges and your online wallets with the same email that you use for everything else.
49:16
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the common pattern.
49:17
[SPEAKER_01]: They'll set up an Android phone with a Gmail account and then use that same email to set up their Coinbase.
49:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And so spread things out.
49:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Make it as hard as you can for people.
49:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And then hopefully if you do become a target that maybe at some point that might skip over you, if you just make it more difficult.
49:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if you don't use a funny
49:38
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the crypto really relies on security.
49:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's the one last thing to me that really needs to be fixed before it's just mass market.
49:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I play golf with guys that are older that are now buying crypto and and I've ever once a while I'll run into people that are, you know, somebody will be like six years old and they're using a ledger.
50:02
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'll run it up like off with people that are like they're scared of death of moving their crypto.
50:07
[SPEAKER_01]: on to these hard wallets or, you know, cold wallet.
50:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And so people need to get over that and do it and learn how to do it.
50:17
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, totally.
50:17
[SPEAKER_05]: It's a generational thing.
50:19
[SPEAKER_05]: I remember my dad told me a story, you know, as I was getting into crypto on all that stuff.
50:24
[SPEAKER_05]: He's like, yeah, it's new forms of money.
50:26
[SPEAKER_05]: All this kind of stuff.
50:26
[SPEAKER_05]: Your grandma would refuse to use an ATM for the longest time when they first came out.
50:31
[SPEAKER_05]: She goes, you know, I'm gonna put my heart earned money and paycheck into this machine and trust that my bank is gonna see it.
50:38
[SPEAKER_05]: That's insane.
50:39
[SPEAKER_05]: That's how
50:42
[SPEAKER_05]: it's a generational shift so here like crypto is is is similar thing
50:47
[SPEAKER_05]: Man, Mark, we really appreciate it.
50:49
[SPEAKER_05]: And we definitely want to have you back on again soon.
50:52
[SPEAKER_05]: People know where to find you at eFani, EFA and I.com slash crypto one-on-one to secure that ninety-nine percent off discount code.
51:01
[SPEAKER_05]: Everybody watching.
51:01
[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you so much.
51:02
[SPEAKER_05]: Again, check them out.
51:04
[SPEAKER_05]: Mark, Critesman, thank you for joining us.
51:07
[SPEAKER_05]: General Manager of a Fani.
51:09
[SPEAKER_05]: Until next time, my friend.
51:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
51:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
51:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Appreciate it.