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That Tech Pod
You May Already Be a Victim Of A SIM-swapping Attack, Here's How To Avoid It With Efani CEO Haseeb Awan
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Today on That Tech Pod, Laura and Gabi chat with Haseeb Awan. Haseeb is the CEO of Efani, America's most secure and private cell phone service, which protects people against SIM Swaps, eavesdropping, and location tracking.
Efani works like any other carrier, except Efani adds exceptional security to phone plans via an impressive security tech stack.
Haseeb is also a co-founder of one of the first and largest bitcoin ATMs - Bitaccess - which has 8000+ locations in 15 countries. He is one of the earliest entrepreneurs in the blockchain space and has invested in 30+ companies.
As one of the top 100 influential people in FinTech globally, Haseeb has been part of documentaries and even congressional hearings to speak on behalf of Bitcoin in its early days.
Hello and welcome to that tech pod where we discuss all things e-discovery, cybersecurity, data privacy, and tech innovations. I'm Laura Milstein, and I know a little bit about technology.
SPEAKER_02And I'm Gabby Schulte, and I know a little bit. I'm gonna be modest today. I just know a little bit about tech.
SPEAKER_03That's why each week we're bringing on heavy hitters in the industry to help us break down these topics. And today, Gabby, who are we talking to?
SPEAKER_02So today we're talking to Haseeb Awan. Haseeb is the CEO of Afani, America's most secure and private cell phone service, which protects people against uh STIM swaps, eavesdropping, and location tracking. We thought he's the perfect person to come on to talk about how to stay safe in terms of location tracking and having a cell phone because everyone has one these days and ever almost every app kind of asks you to use uh those services. So, Haseeb, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_01Uh, thanks for both Debrila and Laura for having me on the show.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. So tell us a little bit about how you got into this industry and what drew you to this specific branch of location tracking and protecting users against that.
SPEAKER_01So they say when life gives you lemon, you make a lemonade. So that's what happened with me too. I got sims up four times over the period of 18 months. Like, you know, people were getting into my phone all the time, and I couldn't find a solution. I was actually going from a carrier to carrier. And then realized that next week no carrier who will focus on cybersecurity. They will send you, oh, I'll give you Netflix, I'll give you Hulu, I'll give you this thing. Oh, why don't you get a new uh offer from me, new phone? I said, man, I just want one thing, security. And what I realized is that there's no cell phone service for security. So like it's like everyone is eating the same McDonald's when it comes to cell phones, right? If you are like Bill Gates or you are like, you know, like someone off the street, I'm not like trying to discriminate, I'm just saying like there's no discrimination, there's no difference between someone who's like have a different need, there's no bullet food cell phone service. So I was a victim of it. I'm a telecom engineer, I remember. Didn't had a chance to practice a lot of that. And I said, why don't I create a service for myself? And when I created it, I figured out there's a lot of people who want the service, and we kind of do uh word of mouth. And once, like, you know, almost like a year in, we realized that there's a lot of attacks happening. Location tracking is a big thing, especially during COVID when people start tracking, like when governments start tracking you and all like and the challenge with the others, if they can do it, criminals can do it too. Because those are like it's like uh there's a loopholes, right? And anyone can use those. And so now we have nation attacks happening on our clients and like you know, our uh you know, citizens of our US. So I said, okay, this is the need that needs to be solved. So that's how we started getting into this problem. So it was like more about customer driven rather than we're trying to find a solution.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you're you're very optimistic. I think I heard the quote different. You said, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. And to my knowledge, it's it's actually when life gives you lemonade, don't try to make lemons. So, you know, we have different outlooks on the same kind of topic, but I'm gonna go with the pessimistic approach here. So to me, you have a cell phone, you're being tracked, you're gonna get stalked. Somebody is gonna capture you, and then when you want people to find you, your stalker is gonna be gone and no one's gonna find you. So prove me wrong. Tell me right now how the cell phone is not dangerous.
SPEAKER_01Well, cell phone is like a knife, right? You can use it to advantage, or you can use it to kill someone. You can make a phone call for emergency, or you can, or someone can find you and kill you. These are two different things. So they are two ends of the spectrum. I personally believe that like any technology, it can be used for beneficial reasons. Uh, the challenge with cell phone is like there are a lot of other social and and mental health challenges caused by cell phones. You know, like this part of the body, like this is something that we eat, uh, you know, we uh the last thing we spend, uh the last thing we see, and the first thing we see, right? Now this is not healthy and social media. That's a separate question. Our my challenge was that there were some things that were not in my control. What was not in my control? I have to go to DMV, I have to go to my bank, and they ask me for my telephone number. And that is something I cannot like, it's not like possible that I should not have a bank account. I can delete Facebook, I can do it on Instagram, but I cannot have a car license. I need to have a license, right? So, and they don't accept any form of ID but my telephone number. And people are using my telephone number, they can walk into a store and transfer their number to uh hack into my number. That's super easy. I don't know if you know that 80% of the SimSov attacks are successful. Anytime someone wants to get in your phone, 80% chance chance they'll be successful. And that was literally happening to me. And so my life was miserable, like there's nothing else I could have done. And that basically made me to solve this problem. And to so to your your question about, you know, we can all live in a utopia where we say we are not tracked and we have all those kinds of systems. But the challenge is as long as you're using digital, some kind of digital solution, you are being tracked in one shape or form. We can talk about how many data are tracking, is it meta data, is it, but they we are tracked. And that's a that's you know, how do I say that's like a kind of a compromise we do for improving our lives?
SPEAKER_03Everyone listening right now, you're probably not safe. As you heard here, you can easily be attacked.
SPEAKER_02Well, to that to that point though, I mean, so who is this um really targeted your your company? So is this really for everyday users? Are these for super spies? Is this for people in the government, or is this, you know, wide, wide uh birth of people, the range that this can apply to?
SPEAKER_01Uh so again, uh, you know, everything in the world could be for everyone, but the reason why we only are able to focus on, you know, like a specific audience because we cannot protect everyone. There's a cost attached to that, like a privacy. You know, you live in a house and you just live by yourself, uh, with like, you know, there's no neighbors, you pay more for it. You live in a hostel or a dorm room, you basically are living with roommates and you pay less for it. So, like if you look at our cell phone plan, they're more like roommate. You all share the same data, they all go through a tunnel, so like a private everyone is eating the same McDonald's. You want to apply first class, you have to pay extra money. You know, so that's what we target towards. Like, yes, absolutely, we can serve everyone. But the challenge is does everyone need it? And more than that, can they afford it or not? Because it's that freedom is not cheap. Like, you know, you have to pay for those things. And I believe that because the house system is designed, we cannot scale it to ordinary people. So, yes, we focus on the top 1%, celebrities, uh, you know, like sea level activities, people who are conscious about like their secure athletes, investors, these are our prime clients.
SPEAKER_03That's how you guys started targeting us. We are flattered and just want to say thank you. It's an honor. It's a true honor. Uh but so so out of curiosity, when you're saying that like cyber attacks or these like terrorist attacks are happening on cell phones. What are they doing? Like what what imp I understand that everybody has their information on a cell phone, but if I am like an actual intense terrorist attacker, I am coming to take over America. Who am I looking for just like I want to get into like Congress people or governor of the president's cell phone? Like, what am I doing here? And wouldn't I be like more of a large scale? Like, am I just like I'm gonna hack the president's cell phone? Or is it like I'm gonna hack the entire Washington, DC metropolitan area's phones? Can I do that?
SPEAKER_01Yes and no, right? So let's talk about like, you know, like let's talk Laura about the specific part about what can go wrong. So there are multiple things. So uh again, like, you know, how can you hurt someone? Are you shooting someone? I'm just giving these analogies. Are you like uh having a bomb blast or you're having uh, you know, a knife attack or like any kind of attack? So one is simple, you get into someone's cell phones and you hack their number, you get into accounts, their email accounts, their social media, and you extract a lot of information. That's a simple attack. It's very targeted, but it's very simple to attack. So you can have a sample size of like 50 people and you can see where you can find information because simple, simple to do. Simple shopping. And it's basically people inside the company, they normally do it either through social engineering or through bribes. You know, like someone in Minnesota, I'm just giving again, I'm just picking up a random place and they work at $10 an hour and you pay them, hey, I'll give you $5,000. Can you give me this person information? Now they could be either not well trained or can we lew by having kind of a bribe? That's one time. Now, other location tracking. Location tracking where you find a specific person. So if I have your number, I can actually find where exactly you are and what your moments are. So hypothetically, I'm like a very bad person. I want to kill you, I want to damage you, I want to find where you are. I can actually find your location and basically come after you. You know, now that's now this can not just happen to individual, but that can also happen to like people traveling on assets, like you are transferring metals from one place to another place or some critical assets. Now, someone can like in Russia can track where the assets are going because they're all connected to 5G and basically potentially attack them. That's another type of attack. Other cat could be like a DDoS attack, which is also single to single type of attack where you can jam the signals. So you signal jammers are pretty common, like you know, I I can go into you, but it does exactly what it says. It's a signal jammer, which means that person is unable to communicate with someone. So you can do it on a hospital where hospital cannot communicate with other side and potentially can cost people life. And cybersecurity attacks are a massive industry. And I'll give you statistics around, I think they say six billion dollars, six trillion dollars were lost in cyber attacks. Six trillion dollars. Because the investment of three dollars, I think that starts where if you invest like five dollars into a cyber attack, they potentially earn out to like $24,000. So it's such a massive high return thing that you'll probably buy, and they can be attacked from anywhere. Like we uh, I think there's attacks on airport yesterday. So I have not looked into that, but this is one form of attack. And everything is connected to cell phone. If you jam someone's communication, you can potentially get into everything that they do. You can eavesdrop them, you can see what messages they're following, you can take their traffic, manipulate their traffic. And I don't want to get into where we get a call from you have a FedEx package, you click on this, and you know it's sending you a malicious text message, and next thing you know is your data is gone.
SPEAKER_03That's extremely interesting and scary and a lot of information. And I want to kind of reroute us just for a quick moment. So minus cyber attacking for a second, let's put that aside and let's just talk about safety. When we're looking at our phones, some people are doing other things to be safe or be secure. So they're using things like Wicker, Signal, WhatsApp, and encrypted messaging, telegram, whatever. But people are also, and um, Kevin who's actually listening to this episode, he runs our education department. Kim and I worked with somebody years ago who actually had found out their spouse was cheating on them by looking at words with friends. So people are doing things like that where they're actually going into random apps that aren't even encrypted because it's words with friends, you think I'm just playing a game and sending messages and figuring out different ways. Um, and I think in eDiscovery, we noticed that it's really hard when you're looking at different things to actually figure out how to read people's data. So when people are committing fraud, if you technically put it in a meme and you sent over what you're doing in a meme to somebody else that you're gonna commit fraud to, it's much harder to actually import that and review that and track that. So I think people are getting a little bit more creative on how they're using things to do illegal things with their own phone without hacking others. They're just at home with their phone saying, I'm gonna commit a fraud, I'm gonna hack something, I'm gonna do something, and I'm just gonna do it via encrypted messaging or via this app, whatever. What are your thoughts on that side? Are people really protecting themselves by using these encrypted apps? Are people protecting themselves by just talking through different games that they're using? Um, is that more secure? Is it if you're gonna commit fraud and you just keep sending it via a meme, are you less likely to get caught? What are your thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_01A lot of people have a different meaning of encryption. Encryption doesn't mean that no one can see your messages. That's a very odd thing. People always encrypt it so no one can see that because encryption is basically done by like a key. You can decrypt anything by having a key. So as long as you have a key, the only thing is you don't know who has the master key. So a lot of apps that you have, they have a master key that's owned by the corporation. Because there's something called legal interception in the US where the caraters have to turn in the data and have to give access to law authorities for national security. Telegram, it's not encrypted unless you ask them to be encrypted. And in that case, we don't even know if it's encrypted or not. So every app that you use has some kind of a log. So that's like a fake uh you know premise of, oh, I'm using this app specific app. Everything is encrypted. I'll give you a simple example. If you remember, uh, I think two years ago, there was someone who got into Twitter accounts and everything, and they were able to access like Byron prison, Biden attack accounts and a lot of high-profile attacks. Now, all of those data was like, you know, someone could have downloaded data. People in Facebook can actually look into your WhatsApp messages, and I they don't accept that, but I believe that's possible. And not just WhatsApp messages, it was also um messenger where they can look into messenger messages and everything again. Yes, these messages are encrypted, but it doesn't mean that only the other person can decry decrypt it. And in some cases, the other person can be compromised too. So they can get into your information. So to summarize, it's never safe. Like, you know, security is not like uh perfect security. There's no like perfect, it's like you know, oh, I'll hire every best doctor in the world and I'll survive. It doesn't work like that. You just make your chances of being hackable less likely. So, like, even though we have never been hacked, but I'm not saying that it's never possible that no one in the world can hack us. We just make the risk so high that the risk reward becomes slightly lower. So you say, hey, I can hack these hundred people without any trouble, I should go for my client and spend 10x of more work. So that's about it. Again, the challenge with other security part is cybersecurity is very difficult for people to get trained on. You are used to like parking our car and locking the car. We are used to self-front password, but we are not used to using hardware keys. You know, we are not used to using password managers, and that's a muscle memory that we have to train for. And we have to get paid for like people would not even pay ten dollars per year for like a password manager. And so that's a thing that we have to change. Uh, same with privacy too. Like, it's a taboo. Like, if I talk a lot of privacy, people think that a CB is doing something wrong. That's why we want privacy. But otherwise, privacy is purely a human right. Like, you know, why you don't want cameras in your house looking at you all the time, you know, or you go to a restroom. So if that's not the case, then why should people look at our cell phone, which is like part of our body? I believe, like, if I have to run right now, if for something like you know, there's an earthquake or or something, the only thing I'll pick up is my cell phone because that's my part of it. I may not even wear shoes, but I'll pick up my phone. So it's part of our body. And why shouldn't I have a privacy of something that I want to do? So um, there was another report. Uh, if you go to border, they dump all the data in their database. And the database is accessible by thousands and thousands of employees in government. Now the employees can change department. And the worst part is they don't even have to ask anyone to access the data. And when they access the data, there's no record of it. Generally, when you access someone's record, you have a subpoena or you have like a court order warrant. But like literally, someone even someone can get bored and look into database and see into your personal messages. And you know, God forbid, like, you know, we are humans and we can make mistakes. People can be corrupt in every society, in every position. Can it be exploited to exploit someone? I don't know. But I'm just thinking that the real disassociated with privacy and even with the abortion issues we had. Like, you know, people are now getting denied with their their health, not getting a too much political, but I think privacy and security is basically a fundamental human right.
SPEAKER_02Totally. And so we're talking about like basically you can become less hackable, but there's no absolute. Let's let's just play a little game. Say I want to become a spy and I or like and I want to be completely off the grid, but I still want to have like a phone that I could do the things that a phone does or whatever. So, like, is there any scenario where you could be like completely unhackable or untraceable?
SPEAKER_01So the two things, right? Unhackable is like security and untraceable is privacy, right? So let's talk about privacy. Like imagine I walk down the street and I just uh pick up a random uh you know uh bus and I just walk into the store, paid cash for $50 for a SIM card. My SIM card is activated, it's not linked to my name, that's privacy, right? After like I've done my job, I can just throw out the SIM card, it's gone. So people will know that this happened, but to not connect to me. That's one option, right? Uh because IDs are not required for SIM cards. That's absolutely that's one thing. Uh now the second part is about can I hack into a phone if someone knows that? That's like not easy. Obviously, I'm biased, so we are kind of we claim that we are unhackable in a way that we protect on this thing. But at the same time, if someone has information and there's a subpoena, we have to follow the law. You know, like so again, security and privacy are totally different things. Can you be absolutely private? Absolutely, you can be. The only challenge is not for long. Because if you give that number to like your doctor and your doctor database get preached, you should basically be able to expose who this person is, and from there you can extract a lot of information. Now, if someone knows into my phone and can get me on my phone, absolutely. Again, that's what we do. So I'm biased. I don't want to like you know say good things, okay. We are the best one in the world, but that's actually a hole. And the reason why this hole exists is because cell phones are made for like efficiency. Again, I'll give an example of McDonald's. Like, you can't go to McDonald's and expect like a very well-done steak, you know, because that's not what they optimize for. You go to like a rice steak restaurant, it'll take half an hour. Now, can everyone wait half an hour and pay $50 for a steak? That's not possible, right? Like, not everyone, so they just say, So, our cell phone companies are more like a McDonald's where they care about everyone with one size. You go in there, you like a Big Mac, that's like your bread and butter. You want something else, you go to like a nice cuisine.
SPEAKER_03Now I'm hungry. So I was just thinking that. I was like, and this podcast episode is not sponsored by McDonald's, but go get a burger. Uh, I loved it. Uh Haseem, you've been awesome today. Um before we let you go, we did want to ask, what are your thoughts on the trends? What are the changes that you think are going to happen? Is there any advice that you have for our listeners on what they should be expecting around the corner?
SPEAKER_01I think so. There's two things I know, right? Uh, one of you'll be more connected than today. Tomorrow, we'll have more devices. Like, you know, now we have Apple Watches, we have like, you know, sensors are getting built in. Our cars have the same car. So we'll be more connected than today, tomorrow than today. And there'll be more hacks than tomorrow, than today. So these are two things that I know. And uh, you know, our goal is that like we can only play a small role. Like, even if we get to like 0.001% of the population, I think we are better. So, what about 99.99% people? How do they protect people? I think they should basically take it seriously and by doing a couple of things, very simple. Like use a password manager. It's a simple thing. I personally use keeper security. This is not, I'm not, I don't get paid by them, but you can use those securities pretty good. You can use like a hardware key, like a UB key, uh, or like a Google, they have keys too. Simple. And having installed like apps like Authi or like you know, Google Authenticator, simple. And frankly, this all will cost you less than $50, one time cost, or maybe $100, but it will basically make you a very weak candidate for uh for someone to get into your account. It literally takes half an hour. Now, 99% of people who listen to this podcast will ignore it because they believe it will not happen to them. But trust me, the person who died today didn't know that he will die today. Same with the hacker too. The guy who's getting hacked tomorrow doesn't know that he'll hack today. So rather than you being a statistic, like please help us out in a way that because every time someone gets hacked, uh uh hacked, the hackers have more money, more resources, and they come after people who have more resources. So please don't be uh uh don't fuel their growth, right? And the only way to do it is by taking like precautions because this money goes to like potentially hurting our citizens across the world. Uh, a lot of people are like they could be criminal, but they could be also terrorist.
SPEAKER_02Well, Haseeb, thank you so much for joining us today. We so appreciated your time.
SPEAKER_01You're welcome. Thank you. Uh thank you, Gabriela and Laura, for having me on the show.
SPEAKER_02So, Laura, we are joined as always by Kevin, our education expert. We just talked to Haseeb Awan. He is the uh, you know, location services keeping you safe, uh, extraordinaire. Tell me your tech takeaways right now.
SPEAKER_03I mean, that description, uh I'm like, I'm like as always, every every time I wait for Kevin to really like dive into the episode, but uh I do want to say that your introduction to the tech takeaways of him is also something I'm I'm really into Gabby, so I just want to share that. But yeah, I mean, I think it's a scary episode, and I never feel secure with technology, but I'm addicted and love technology, so it's a fine line. Kevin, why don't you break down the episode for us?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think the interesting piece was who is the audience for this, right? You, you know, you obviously you want everybody to be secure, you want everybody to have the ability to kind of have the highest level of security, but he's also recognizing that this is not necessarily something that is for everyday people. Obviously, they're targeting athletes, they're talking about targeting politicians and kind of high profile people. And that makes sense to me because this seems like a thing that is over the top. But at the same time, I feel like this is probably where we're all gonna go and end up down the road. And so I definitely think it's something that I'm gonna look into. I personally do use a password manager, but I don't use a hardware key. And so some of the things he gave and some of the tips he gave are certainly interesting. And so I do feel like there are some things in there for sort of the everyday user as well, as opposed to just for the the extreme folks who are super worried who may be doing hacking or spying, or maybe a high-profile politician who obviously listen to this podcast all the time.
SPEAKER_02Of course. Um, Laura, if people want to find out um, you know, how they should not get hacked or uh tracked, where do they go?
SPEAKER_03They should reach out to us. They should ask us and maybe we'll tell them. So if you want to know anything about anything at all, reach out to us. And we may or may not have the answer. You can do that by emailing us at contact at thattechpod.com. Swing on over to our website, www.thattechpod.com, enter your email to subscribe, check out any of the episodes that you may have unfortunately for you missed, but it's not too late just to listen to them, get some tech gear, make some good life choices, head on over to LinkedIn slash that tech pod, Twitter, Instagram, be real, get real, I'm real. On to the next, Gabby. You're real.
SPEAKER_02If you want to uh just help us out even further, um go to Spotify or Apple Podcasts, anywhere you're listening to this podcast, and give us a five star rating and review. We would love you forever, and we will see you next time. Good night.