The increase of SIM Swap Frauds and new risks on European costumers: Payment services and data protection in Italian law courts

Abstract

This paper analyses consumers’ legal protection when they are victims of banking frauds through the internet banking systems. In the last decade, there was a strong increase in telematic frauds, also the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent use of smart working by employees has been exploited by fraudsters. In this context, customers became the favourite victims of cybercriminals, who have found more complex telematic frauds based on social engineering, such as chief executive officer (CEO) frauds, but more often the SIM (Subscriber Identification Module) Swap Fraud, through the identification procedures employed by mobile operators and becoming the new owner of the SIM card of victims. In this respect, the recent legal reforms on payment services and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) became the milestone of consumers’ legal protection. Italian leading cases on SIM Swap Frauds will be analysed in more detail, describing the main criteria and principles of European and Italian data protection laws applied to personal data processing of the victims.