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Hey - That's me. you're right - We're a Secure MVNO. I'll look into the about us page. We're a MVNO that guarantees protection against SIM Swap . We've additio

Hey - That's me. you're right - We're a Secure MVNO. I'll look into the about us page. We're a MVNO that guarantees protection against SIM Swap . We've additional protections but not able to offer it to public yet.

aliqot 4y ago
> guarantees protection against SIM Swap Not from a marketing standpoint, but from a procedural level, how is this guaranteed?
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I also have this question. My understanding of SIM porting (the legitimate form of swapping) is that it's basically impossible (and undesirable) to prevent if the originating network operator is convinced of the user's identity, which is why phishing is so effective.
  - ahaseeb 4y ago
    It's just a specific set of procedures that we follow which are skipped by traditional carrier. Think of it as a boutique approach. Every carrier can frankly stop but it's not worth the effort for them due to scale they operate with and mass market they've to cater to
    - dvtrn 4y ago
      It's just a specific set of procedures that we follow which are skipped by traditional carrier Are you able to go into detail about this without giving up proprietary/secret sauce? Asking as a former pbx engineer at a couple of CLECs who is intimately familiar with the LNP process.
      - ahaseeb 4y ago
        Sure absolutely. So about Sim Swap, if some one request we've an internal process to verify - For external ports, a carrier can reject a port out . Just having the right info doesn't qualifies for automatic port out. Most of the companies do it due to FCC requirement of 4 hours. We've the resources to identify, reject and approve requests
        e-clinton 4y ago
        Maybe you’re new to HN, but this response should’ve been numerous paragraphs long going into excruciating detail about what how exactly the guarantee works. Additionally, there are basic English typos in your response.. as CEO of a phone company, you want to come off more polished and “on the ball”, else you will have a difficult time building trust.
        ahaseeb 4y ago
        English is my 4th language, but this isn't an excuse for typos, so I'll be more careful. So to answer the original question on how we can guarantee while other carriers are not. There are two common attacks to compromise your account. Sim Swap & Port out In Sim Swap, any employee person can replace the SIM Card without permission by changing the number on the dashboard. Every primary carrier SIM card is available online, so criminals buy 100s of them and then rent logins to change this information. These logins are available for as little as 10k from the dark web. The port-out attack is when criminal changes your carrier, which requires your account #, Zip Code & PIN in a few cases. Other information can be fake, so it isn't required. Port out must be completed within hours, and carriers have automated the process. So how does Efani guarantee against it? I've been a victim of SIM Swap and have dealt with hundreds of incidents. No one is perfect, but we're just better at dealing with such attacks. We authenticate clients using multiple ways and treat every request as fraud. It isn't an automated process & even within the company, it's taken very seriously and has to be approved by multiple resources. Our authentication methods include notary public and video authentication, and clients can also request a unique authentication process. We employ US Citizens who're security cleared and don't outsource support or operations. A lot of our staff isn't public due to security reasons. They are well paid compared to regular CS staff and are well-trained against these attacks. Our SIM cards are not publicly available, eliminating the risk of anyone obtaining them. Information on the account is pseudonymized, so if a client has compromised himself, we're able to stop the impersonation. Cool-off period - In case of high risk, we put a 14-day cool-off period to any request to ensure the client isn't compromised We follow a few other methods in addition to the above and constantly. We've been able to stop all the attacks so far and are confident in our ability to deliver on the promise; Efani Secure Mobile is also securing clients with $5M Insurance. If you ever get compromised, you'll receive an apology, so we went beyond to ensure peace of mind. Please let me know if further clarification is required.
    - aliqot 4y ago
      I appreciate the response, however it is quite vague, and I'm not any closer to a conclusion than when I asked. Would a yes/no type of question get a more straight forward answer? Have you had a user get swapped, yes or no? Guarantee is a word that has weight to it, I'm not seeing anything substantiating a guarantee other than the claim. I'm trying to understand the spirit of its use in this context by asking this.
      - LinkLink 4y ago
        For a mobile carrier to prevent sim swapping assuming they themselves have good enough security policies, is trivial. Most people get sim swapped bc an insider rep sends a request to a local store, or a local store doesn't do their due diligence, or even more likely, that everyone involved is incompetent, overworked, and doesn't care. The real service being sold here is the idea that in exchange for a premium, a company will train employees correctly and enforce strong security policies. which would be skipped by a normal telco because they want as much profit as possible off the top of your 30$ a month.
        ahaseeb 4y ago
        Yeah and that's exactly what we do. We do have enterprise and gov offering with advanced protection but general public isn't the right candidate for that .
      - ahaseeb 4y ago
        No since inception, we had ZERO clients SIM swapped or ported out without authorization. We've a $5M Insurance policy just if incase but luckily never had to use it
        budgi4 4y ago
        Have you prevented any sim swap attempts?
        ahaseeb 4y ago
        At least few dozen and multiple cases where legal notices were sent to claim ownership of the numbers by 3rd parties such as spouses or hostile take over of exotic numbers
  - adrr 4y ago
    Company doing the SMS/phone verification can lookup to see if the number was recently ported is the only protection that I know. You used to be able go ping E911 location but they cracked down on selling that data.
    - ahaseeb 4y ago
      E911 location tracking is still active unfortunately. We've came up with the solution through our premium offering Black Seal Protection but fairly limited to who we can sell it to
- ahaseeb 4y ago
  We follow a 11-layer authentication process to block any fraudulent request
  - snoopy_telex 4y ago
    Can you describe the layers? I mean, layers could be as simple as: 1. Does last name match? 2. Does first name match? 3. Does middle name match? 4. Does name suffix match? 5. Does country match? 6. Does state match? 7. Does city match? 8. Does street match? 9. Does house number match? 10. Does apartment number match? 11. Does phone number match?
    - ahaseeb 4y ago
      It's much more than that . It's a manual review and we've our own set of authentication which includes notarization even
woodruffw 4y ago
Thanks for responding, and for looking into it. I don't mean to make too fine of a point from it; the combination of missing pages and slightly "off" formatting (mixed capitalization of the company name, other company logos embedded without rounding or blending) sets off my phishing alarm.
- ahaseeb 4y ago
  Actually you're right in questioning the legitimacy . Will get them fixed. 404 error is now gone
sosodev 4y ago
Why does your landing page say "100% guaranteed protection" and then follow it up "$5 million in insurance against losses due to SIM swaps"? It directly undermines the 100% claim.
- googlryas 4y ago
  It sounds like they're giving a $5M guarantee that you won't be sim swapped.
  - ahaseeb 4y ago
    it's additional protection and helps with the liabilities When I was SIM Swapped 4-times, I only got a courtesy call saying Sorry for the inconvenience caused. I thought having $5M Insurance on top of guarantee will be better
    - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
      Will you pay out in the event that SS7 is compromised, as opposed to your support people giving the swap to a random attacker? I think this is cool, but also think it's important to be clear what's being offered.
      - ahaseeb 4y ago
        We do have SS7 level protection but we're unable to offer it to consumers. About insurance, it's limited to Sim Swap/Port outs
- randomguy0 4y ago
  Because “100% guarantee” doesn’t actually mean anything i.e. they have protection in some shape or form.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ahaseeb 4y ago

aliqot 4y ago

> guarantees protection against SIM Swap Not from a marketing standpoint, but from a procedural level, how is this guaranteed?

woodruffw 4y ago
I also have this question. My understanding of SIM porting (the legitimate form of swapping) is that it's basically impossible (and undesirable) to prevent if the originating network operator is convinced of the user's identity, which is why phishing is so effective.
- ahaseeb 4y ago
  It's just a specific set of procedures that we follow which are skipped by traditional carrier. Think of it as a boutique approach. Every carrier can frankly stop but it's not worth the effort for them due to scale they operate with and mass market they've to cater to
  - dvtrn 4y ago
    It's just a specific set of procedures that we follow which are skipped by traditional carrier Are you able to go into detail about this without giving up proprietary/secret sauce? Asking as a former pbx engineer at a couple of CLECs who is intimately familiar with the LNP process.
    - ahaseeb 4y ago
      Sure absolutely. So about Sim Swap, if some one request we've an internal process to verify - For external ports, a carrier can reject a port out . Just having the right info doesn't qualifies for automatic port out. Most of the companies do it due to FCC requirement of 4 hours. We've the resources to identify, reject and approve requests
      - e-clinton 4y ago
        Maybe you’re new to HN, but this response should’ve been numerous paragraphs long going into excruciating detail about what how exactly the guarantee works. Additionally, there are basic English typos in your response.. as CEO of a phone company, you want to come off more polished and “on the ball”, else you will have a difficult time building trust.
        ahaseeb 4y ago
        English is my 4th language, but this isn't an excuse for typos, so I'll be more careful. So to answer the original question on how we can guarantee while other carriers are not. There are two common attacks to compromise your account. Sim Swap & Port out In Sim Swap, any employee person can replace the SIM Card without permission by changing the number on the dashboard. Every primary carrier SIM card is available online, so criminals buy 100s of them and then rent logins to change this information. These logins are available for as little as 10k from the dark web. The port-out attack is when criminal changes your carrier, which requires your account #, Zip Code & PIN in a few cases. Other information can be fake, so it isn't required. Port out must be completed within hours, and carriers have automated the process. So how does Efani guarantee against it? I've been a victim of SIM Swap and have dealt with hundreds of incidents. No one is perfect, but we're just better at dealing with such attacks. We authenticate clients using multiple ways and treat every request as fraud. It isn't an automated process & even within the company, it's taken very seriously and has to be approved by multiple resources. Our authentication methods include notary public and video authentication, and clients can also request a unique authentication process. We employ US Citizens who're security cleared and don't outsource support or operations. A lot of our staff isn't public due to security reasons. They are well paid compared to regular CS staff and are well-trained against these attacks. Our SIM cards are not publicly available, eliminating the risk of anyone obtaining them. Information on the account is pseudonymized, so if a client has compromised himself, we're able to stop the impersonation. Cool-off period - In case of high risk, we put a 14-day cool-off period to any request to ensure the client isn't compromised We follow a few other methods in addition to the above and constantly. We've been able to stop all the attacks so far and are confident in our ability to deliver on the promise; Efani Secure Mobile is also securing clients with $5M Insurance. If you ever get compromised, you'll receive an apology, so we went beyond to ensure peace of mind. Please let me know if further clarification is required.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    I appreciate the response, however it is quite vague, and I'm not any closer to a conclusion than when I asked. Would a yes/no type of question get a more straight forward answer? Have you had a user get swapped, yes or no? Guarantee is a word that has weight to it, I'm not seeing anything substantiating a guarantee other than the claim. I'm trying to understand the spirit of its use in this context by asking this.
    - LinkLink 4y ago
      For a mobile carrier to prevent sim swapping assuming they themselves have good enough security policies, is trivial. Most people get sim swapped bc an insider rep sends a request to a local store, or a local store doesn't do their due diligence, or even more likely, that everyone involved is incompetent, overworked, and doesn't care. The real service being sold here is the idea that in exchange for a premium, a company will train employees correctly and enforce strong security policies. which would be skipped by a normal telco because they want as much profit as possible off the top of your 30$ a month.
      - ahaseeb 4y ago
        Yeah and that's exactly what we do. We do have enterprise and gov offering with advanced protection but general public isn't the right candidate for that .
    - ahaseeb 4y ago
      No since inception, we had ZERO clients SIM swapped or ported out without authorization. We've a $5M Insurance policy just if incase but luckily never had to use it
      - budgi4 4y ago
        Have you prevented any sim swap attempts?
        ahaseeb 4y ago
        At least few dozen and multiple cases where legal notices were sent to claim ownership of the numbers by 3rd parties such as spouses or hostile take over of exotic numbers
- adrr 4y ago
  Company doing the SMS/phone verification can lookup to see if the number was recently ported is the only protection that I know. You used to be able go ping E911 location but they cracked down on selling that data.
  - ahaseeb 4y ago
    E911 location tracking is still active unfortunately. We've came up with the solution through our premium offering Black Seal Protection but fairly limited to who we can sell it to
ahaseeb 4y ago
We follow a 11-layer authentication process to block any fraudulent request
- snoopy_telex 4y ago
  Can you describe the layers? I mean, layers could be as simple as: 1. Does last name match? 2. Does first name match? 3. Does middle name match? 4. Does name suffix match? 5. Does country match? 6. Does state match? 7. Does city match? 8. Does street match? 9. Does house number match? 10. Does apartment number match? 11. Does phone number match?
  - ahaseeb 4y ago
    It's much more than that . It's a manual review and we've our own set of authentication which includes notarization even

woodruffw 4y ago

Thanks for responding, and for looking into it. I don't mean to make too fine of a point from it; the combination of missing pages and slightly "off" formatting (mixed capitalization of the company name, other company logos embedded without rounding or blending) sets off my phishing alarm.

ahaseeb 4y ago
Actually you're right in questioning the legitimacy . Will get them fixed. 404 error is now gone

sosodev 4y ago

Why does your landing page say "100% guaranteed protection" and then follow it up "$5 million in insurance against losses due to SIM swaps"? It directly undermines the 100% claim.

googlryas 4y ago
It sounds like they're giving a $5M guarantee that you won't be sim swapped.
- ahaseeb 4y ago
  it's additional protection and helps with the liabilities When I was SIM Swapped 4-times, I only got a courtesy call saying Sorry for the inconvenience caused. I thought having $5M Insurance on top of guarantee will be better
  - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
    Will you pay out in the event that SS7 is compromised, as opposed to your support people giving the swap to a random attacker? I think this is cool, but also think it's important to be clear what's being offered.
    - ahaseeb 4y ago
      We do have SS7 level protection but we're unable to offer it to consumers. About insurance, it's limited to Sim Swap/Port outs
randomguy0 4y ago
Because “100% guarantee” doesn’t actually mean anything i.e. they have protection in some shape or form.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ahaseeb 4y ago