SIM swap complaints halved, and so did the losses

US SIM swap complaints fell from 2,026 in 2022 to 971 in 2025, and reported losses fell from $72.7 million to $17.4 million over the same period — a 76% drop. It is one of the few categories in FBI data where both measures moved down together, and the likeliest explanation is that carriers and platforms changed how the attack works rather than that criminals lost interest.

The facts, as recorded

Why this case matters

Almost nothing in this dataset goes down on both measures. SIM swap did: complaints halved and losses fell by three quarters between 2022 and 2025.

That makes it worth asking what changed, because the answer is not “criminals stopped trying”.

What plausibly happened

Three things happened over the same period, and all three attack the mechanism rather than the motivation.

Carriers hardened the port-out process. Number-transfer PINs, account locks and additional verification became widely available and, in several markets, default. The attack in the SEC case below succeeded because a carrier employee accepted a fraudulent ID card; a port-out PIN would have stopped it regardless of how good the card was.

Regulators required it. The US Federal Communications Commission adopted rules on SIM swap and port-out fraud that obliged carriers to authenticate customers before moving a number.

Platforms moved off SMS. Exchanges and banks pushed users toward authenticator apps and hardware keys, which reduces what a stolen number is worth even when the swap succeeds.

What it does not mean

The average loss per complaint is still about $17,900 — among the highest of any category IC3 tracks. This is a low-volume, high-value crime, and the people it reaches still lose a great deal.

The decline also does not mean phone numbers stopped mattering. It means one route to them got harder. The August 2026 FBI advisory on stolen explicit content describes a cheaper alternative already in use: asking the victim to forward a verification code, which gets the same access without involving a carrier at all.

What it tells you about the scheme

This is the clearest evidence on the site that scam categories respond to structural change. Nobody persuaded criminals to stop; carriers and platforms altered the mechanism, and the numbers followed.

The individual version of the same lesson is worth acting on: set a port-out PIN with your carrier, and move two-factor authentication off SMS wherever an authenticator app or hardware key is offered.

Sources

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