Why scammers want your phone number

This article explains why attackers value phone numbers and how they weaponize them through smishing and phishing, malware delivery, call forwarding abuse, SIM swapping, and caller ID spoofing to seize accounts (including SMS 2FA), impersonate victims, and enable BEC/CEO fraud; it recommends defenses such as verifying requests, adding carrier protections (e.g., SIM locks), limiting personal data exposure, preferring app-based MFA over SMS, and using mobile security and enterprise mobile threat defense.