Mark Kreitzman (3:12)

Yeah, great question. So, Mark Kreitzman. I've been in CyberSecurity since around 2001 and I've worked for founders to build companies that were acquired by Microsoft and Cisco Systems. And I got the crypto bug around 2017. It's when I bought my first couple, bitcoin. And in 2017 and 18 I was building my own crypto project. So I was building an SDK with a friend of mine where we could turn any mobile app into a crypto app literally in like an hour if you've got a, a good coder. And I got hacked. And so when I was driving to my parents house in Arizona, Southern Arizona, I got hit in the middle of the desert between Phoenix and Tucson. Somebody stole my mobile account away. I had, I didn't know it at the time, I just knew that my mobile account had gone dead and I became a hack victim. And so when I finally got to wi fi at my parents house, 6Password resets went up my phone, my Coinbase account got, got hit a bank account did. Wow. Two cloud accounts, but six accounts in total. And at the time I had, I had two bitcoins sitting in Coinbase. So at the time it was, it wasn't that much, you know, 2018 it was, was somewhere around like 3,000 a piece. And now I have to do the math. So every day I wake up, don't.

Bryce (4:34)

Do it, Mark, don't do it.

Mark Kreitzman (4:36)

Yeah. And you know, and so I had to try and catch up and buy, but at the time I had no idea. Like I, I would have Thought I would have been happy if Bitcoin went to, you know, 10 grand. And so I didn't fight it too hard at that time. But that's what set it off is now I'm like, well, how did this happen to me? Because I've been cyber security for 19 years, and at that time I had everything set up properly, thought I was protected, my carrier let me down and it turns out I had to trick the carrier into, into them telling me what happened. But it turns out that it was an employee at a third party phone store that just simply lied to a computer in Memphis, Tennessee, that I was standing there. Of course I was in California when I. Well, I was in Arizona. I got hit, but I was living in California. But somebody in Memphis, Tennessee lied to a computer and they took my mobile account away for 61 minutes and then ported it back. So they tried to hide it. And then I didn't sleep for a couple months. And then I found the only person on the planet that claimed they had solved it, which is our current founder and CEO. He happened to be in the process of building one of the larger Bitcoin ATM networks and he had been hit multiple times. And so he had solved this for himself. It's a very expensive way to do it. And I said, this is what I do. And I'm so angry I can't sleep, so I'd love to be part of this. And so the two of us sort of hit it off because we were both into crypto and a little bit later on, the ledger hack happened. And that's kind of where we got our first growth, because once that hack happened, all of a sudden all these people are getting spams and email and text messages, SIM swaps, and we really took off. At that point we started hiring. So. So I got into Afoni because of pain. Wow. It's still sort of PTSD at this point. Like every day I wake up, I still have to kind of look at my accounts and look at everything. Still kind of paranoid and, and, you know, not from my mobile side of things, because Afani has that covered. But yeah, Afani was started out of pain.

Bryce (6:37)

And one of the, the famous sayings I saw, I think Elon Musk tweeted it out recently, but only the paranoid survive. And so I think you're, you're right on there. And I'm sorry that happened. That, that's, that's really, you know, gut wrenching. And I've heard, you know, plenty of stories about hacks and stuff, and, you know, People trust their carriers, right. You know, I'm not going to name any names, but people trust all the big ones. It's kind of like the big bank. You're like, oh, nothing's ever going to go wrong if I'm with Verizon or T Mobile or whatever or just like nothing's ever going to go wrong if I'm JP Morgan or Chase.

Mark Kreitzman (7:10)

Right.

Bryce (7:10)

These are like, you know, kind of similar in the sense of their institutions. They're infallible, but they're definitely not. And people set up, you know, security, you know, extra security in their accounts, on their phones with a PIN code or something like that. Why is that? Just not secure enough.

Mark Kreitzman (7:27)

Yeah, well, one is that these. So the, so the carriers are awesome, right? The mobile connectivity all around the world. So the tech is just how it works. All, you know, works all together. It's amazing. I've been in, you know, I worked for AT&T for 10 years myself. I worked in, inside the network of AT&T. So yeah, the carriers are awesome. But the problem is, is that they have too many holes. There's too many people that have too much power, just software wise via just, you know, their computer and, and logging in. And a lot of people don't really realize that most of the mobile phone stores are actually independently owned. And so you're relying on them vetting their own employees, monitoring their own employees and following all the processes and, you know, so that somebody can't simply lie to a computer and say that the customer is standing there in front of them when they're, you know, 3,500 miles away. And so that's the problem. They have call centers, huge call centers. So, you know, when you call and you verify, they could have a recording device on them, they could have camera in their glasses when you go into the store and record it. But a lot of, you know, a lot of the things that are happening with mobile hacks is because of insiders. It's like they've got a buddy that works in a phone store, they bribe somebody. The, the Brian Armstrong story that came out like, you know, what was that two months ago? Or.

Bryce (8:48)

I was just gonna bring that up when, yeah, all the Coinbase customer support agents overseas got bribed.

Mark Kreitzman (8:55)

Yeah. So they've been buying it. And I think, I don't think it was recent. I think that they've been, they've been buying from Coinbase customer support probably for a couple years because I, a lot of the people that get hacked and then call a fani up, most of them will end up coming to me because I want to learn about how they got SIM swapped or how did they get hacked, but, but in particular how they got SIM swapped. And so I think that the Coinbase issue has been going on for years. But you know, when they buy that information, then they're able to access people's Coinbase account with really out without sort of social engineering. If they can get enough information now, now if Coinbase closes that down, then what are these hackers going to do with that information? Well, the next thing they're going to do is they're going to sim swap people. They're going to use that info to sim swap them. So when they go to hack Coinbase, it's not, they don't have to social engineer Coinbase in order to take from their account. And so we believe that these Coinbase data breaches wind up in other types of hacks like a SIM swap. But every data breach that happens, there's it. It does result in SIM swaps because people's information gets, gets in the hackers hands. And a lot of people make mistakes. They use the same email for multiple accounts, like for their bank account, their Kraken, their Coinbase. They use that same email to send emails to family, friends, sign up for websites, and they don't really think about the fact that they are basically publicizing half of their login. You know, it's the login, right. And so a lot of times what these hackers can do is and, and just to educate people on how advanced like AI is, you know, we know it can clone voices and it can clone video and create avatars of people. But you know, one of the easier things for AI is to discover like every email and every mobile number associated with you. And I've had this demoed for me where this guy. So like I approved it and I said, look, just sue me. And it came up with emails that, you know, I haven't used in eight years, 10 years, came up with landlines that were from three houses ago, but, but identified one of my emails. I thought that I had not connected to anything else that I had used on three different crypto accounts because at this point now I spread everything out. I have multiple cold wallets, multiple exchanges, I barely keep anything on an online wallet anymore. But, but it discovered that email so now it kind of gave me chills because I was like, I couldn't wait to get off the call because then I had to go run and change those emails. But if you think about how easy it is for somebody to go into Coinbase and then just type in the five emails associated with you and say forgot password. And then what reaction does it, does it get so they can actually sort of prep themselves on you? And then they would need, then they would know that if it, if it says enter this, the, the, the number we just texted you, then they know, okay, all I got to do is SIM swap them. And so now you've become a target. And, and if it says enter the six digit authenticator app code, now they, now they know I got to SIM swap them, I got to get rid of their email, I got to get and reset their authenticator app. And so they can do prep work. And, and it's just, you know, unfortunate that all these data breaches are happening. I, I don't know if you guys heard about this breach of like 16 billion logins and passwords that somebody stole from basically the servers from Apple, Google, Facebook, and, and so that's the largest one in history. And that just happened in the last 90 days. And so it's, you gotta be very diligent. As I say, data privacy's gone in the US it's just everything's been breached so many times that our information is out there. And so it's upon us to protect ourselves, both for privacy and for security.

TiVo (12:58)

All right, Cryp Nation fam, let's pause for one second and talk about an important issue going on right now. And that's SIM swap attacks. SIM swap attacks are becoming a serious threat, especially in crypto. If someone gets control of your phone number, they can access your bank accounts, your exchanges emails, and even your private messages. That's why the Crypto 101 podcast is partnered with Afani. It's America's most secure mobile service, offering a guaranteed protection against SIM swaps with added privacy. Since launching, not one single Afani user has ever been SIM swapped. And for some reason, if it ever does happen, you're backed by up to 5, $5 million in insurance against financial losses. This is literally why we chose to partner with them. It is. Our favorite thing about Afani is the insurance policy of up to $5 million if it does happen to you. Afani runs on either AT&T or the Verizon network and you get to choose which one. There are no contracts and it is super easy and seamless to sign up. You also get a 60 day money back guarantee, so there's zero risk in trying it out. Right now for our listeners, you get 99 off when you sign up at afoni.com crypto101 that's afani.com crypto101 or check the show notes below for a link. These days your phone number is probably more valuable than your Social Security number, so make sure it's protected with Afani. Did you know your credit card points and miles can lose value to inflation while they collect dust, and credit card companies often reduce the redemption value of your points and miles. Now imagine a credit card with rewards that can grow in value. With Gemini Credit Card, you can earn Bitcoin or one of over 50 other cryptos instantly with no annual fee. Every swipe at the store or gas pump earns you instant rewards deposited straight into your account. Plus sign up now for a $200 bitcoin bonus to kickstart your rewards. Visit gemini.com card today. Again. If you're looking to invest in Bitcoin but don't know where to start, or you're a faithful listener of the Crypto 101 podcast and love Bitcoin and other cryptos, visit the Gemini credit card website so it's easy for you to earn even more Bitcoin or crypto with their credit card again. Visit gemini.comcard today to learn more.

Mark Kreitzman (15:02)

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Unknown (15:32)

Well, we've talked about this term a couple times already when it comes to SIM swap. Can you explain a little bit more about what a swims a SIM swap is and how that happens?

Mark Kreitzman (15:44)

Yeah, so pretty much anybody that has a mobile phone has done a legal SIM swap. So so if you have an iPhone 11 today and then you go into the store and you get the new iPhone 16 and once they have that set up you say okay, I want to move my mobile service from my 11 to my 16 and so the store can do that, right? And it's done from one iPhone to the next. So that's a legal one. The illegal an illegal SIM swap is where a nefarious person does that, except instead of sending it to your new phone, they're sending it to their phone and it happens in the network. So some people will think that, well, you can't SIM swap me because you have to steal my physical phone, or you can't SIM swap me because I set up a, what's called the SIM pin lock on my phone. And the reality is, is that the change is done in the network. And so if you're on T mobile, for example, and I'm the hacker and I want to go after Bryce, I'm going to convince or I'm going to bribe T mobile that I'm Bryce, that I've lost my cell phone and I'm in an emergency situation. I need my. I need the network to point the mobile account from the stolen phone over to the phone now in my hand. And so the reality is, is that no matter how much you've invested on that device, it's no longer even in the equation. It doesn't. Passwords you put on your device, facial recognition, thumbprint, antivirus, all of that, that device is no longer in the equation and hackers just don't care. So the mobile account for Bryce now pointing at this phone. So now I'm going to go, forgot password, forgot password, forgot password, down the line and see what I can break into. And if anything is just purely sms, then I own it at that point. Wow. And if that happens to be an email, then I'm going to look through your email, I'm going to Download the last 2, 3 years of your email to make sure I've got some data I can sell or hack you. Later on I'm going to look for notifications of like, are you using Duo? Are you using Google Authenticator? Is there Coinbase, Bitfinex, any, you know, any exchange? And now, and so really, really quickly, I can really target in on where I want to try and hit you.

Unknown (18:05)

Are certain devices or providers better than others at preventing this? Like, my immediate thought goes to, like, are all providers and networks and devices created equal? Where maybe an iPhone safer than an Android or maybe Verizon safer than AT&T? Like, is there a scenario like that or is it just like everyone's at risk of this and if you are someone that has a substantial net worth or a position of profit of substantial like importance, then you're just at risk of this.

Mark Kreitzman (18:38)

Yeah, it's a great question. So you could, you could buy a military phone built by, designed by NASA, and if it's got a regular carrier connected to it, it doesn't matter. Wow. Because, you know, the device is just taken out of the equation. So in terms of the SIM swap, it doesn't matter whether it's an iPhone, Android, Graphene OS. In fact, we've partnered with four different secure phone providers, and they come to us because they say the same thing, which is we've got this incredibly secure phone. We believe it's the most secure phone on the planet, and it'll be something based on graphene OS or another custom version of that. But they all say the same thing, which is it's super secure until you put a SIM or. Or an EIM in it, and we have no control over that. And so they want to partner with us. And so we've partnered with above phone, for example, they sell a graphene OS phone. We partnered with Mark 37. They sell the ghost phone and it. So. So in terms of the SIM swapping. Yeah, it doesn't really matter. Wow. Yeah. Now there is a difference. There are benefits of, like a graphene OS phone for other security because Afoni provides SIM swapping. But. But we also help with privacy, and we also help with some of the network attacks as part of our standard service. So as I talked about before, one of the holes in the carriers is the phone stores. And so when you buy mobile service from Afani, So we resell AT&T and Verizon, but so when you buy AT&T from Afani, we don't tell AT&T who this person is. You're address, your birthday, your Social Security. You know, if you think about it, you basically have a credit account with these carriers if you're direct with them. And. And so our customers have basically information about a fani, or we have multiple addresses, for example, so those will be in the account most likely. And so there's privacy from prying eyes, but there are also also some network things that we do as well. And. And so a fan E plus, like an above phone is a pretty strong combination. It's stronger than a Fonny plus the iPhone.

Bryce (20:56)

Interesting. And so, like, when people are listening to this, they might be thinking two things. One, wow, I had no idea that all these security vulnerabilities exist. I'm exposed, you know, how do I, you know, you know, cover up these holes? But then number two is like, if I'm not gonna trust carrier, you know, the big four carriers, that I'm gonna have to trust Afoni and make sure that Afani are good actors. And so tell us a little bit about, you know, why we can trust Afani and what makes you guys different.

Mark Kreitzman (21:29)

Yeah, so one is Afoni is founded by victims. And so this is more than a Business there. It's a. You know, there's a passion around doing this. You know, I would have never woken up otherwise and thought, like, well, I want to start selling mobile service. And so there's, you know, it came out of that pain. The other thing, too, is we back up our Service with a $5 million insurance policy. And the easiest way to explain our business is that we provide mobile service and we're going to protect that insurance policy from ever being utilized, and therefore the customer gets protected by that. And so far, we started in 2018 and we've had zero SIM swaps. We have thousands of customers. 15% of our customers are like, who's who? And so we've got customers that are part of Hollywood, professional athletes, a lot of, like, we have hedge funds now, family offices. So we've got consumers and businesses, and family offices are getting. Or they're starting to invest in crypto, so they're becoming targets. And so that $5 million insurance policy is our reputation, it's the value of the company, and we're going to make sure that that never gets utilized. And other than that, it's. We're paranoid people and we live with PTSD and we're. And we don't want anybody else to ever go through this. And we talk to victims all the time that unfortunately, they're victims before they come to a fani. And. And it's painful to. To hear their story, and a lot of times they just want to tell their story.

Bryce (23:12)

But, yeah, and so to give us a little bit of, you know, more, you know, detailed understanding of how the system works so that, you know, we could have. The more knowledge we have, the less fear we have. And so does Afani. You know, I like, walk me through the process. I go, I sign up for a fonny, Afani takes all my personal information and then does what with it? And how do I end up with a cell phone at the end of it?

Mark Kreitzman (23:40)

Yeah, so. So one. So a couple key things is that I want to clarify because people picture Afani as having, like, data centers and racks of servers and. Yeah. And all this elaborate stuff going on. But the reality is, is that what we've actually done is we've stripped all the tech out of it. So we're selling you a mobile service like AT&T, and we're not selling your data. And the only data we do collect is the payment information. And you can pay, and you can't pay with stable coins on our website. So you can do that anonymously. And collecting Verification information, and that's the only thing we're collecting. So we're not collecting call records, SMS records, any kind of usage, because that's a liability. And so.

Bryce (24:25)

But somebody, somebody's collecting that, right?

Mark Kreitzman (24:27)

So afoni's under what's called, what's a CLIA law, it's federal laws. So you never want to use a mobile service that's not following federal laws because they may just disappear one day. So the data is collected, is required to be collected by the carriers. They're just collecting data that's anonymous to them. And so if somebody is a customer of ours and they'd call us up and they said, like, can I have my call record for the last 30 days? The process would be, is that they have to formally request it. We then make the request and, and then gather that information and provide it to the customer. And so the carrier would provide it really without like your name, your personal information attached. And we don't, we don't, we never take birthday, we never take Social Security or anything like that. So we just view the more that we would collect to be liability. So we just don't, we just don't want the information. And, and in terms of our service, what. The way I describe the mobile industry is that every reseller, wholesaler store out there, we all have portals that allow you to move customers around. So if, like, you wanted to move to Afani, then we just need a couple bits of information like the account number, the mobile number and a temporary transfer pin and we can go into our portal and port your number over without having to talk to your carrier and you don't have to talk to your carrier. And it sounds wonderful, but what the mobile industry has done is they have made it super cheap for you to leave. So it's like, okay, well, if you're going to leave my mobile service, then I don't want to, I don't want to waste time talking to you. You just, here's the information, you know, go do it smart. But that's the scary part about it is, and that's why. So these SIM swaps are so easy. Like if I borrowed your phone, I got an emergency, I borrowed your phone. Like, you know, you're on Verizon, for example, and I, I'm looking at my phone and I hit pound, couple numbers pound and it's going to text me back a temporary transfer pin. Wow. Now I'm going to delete that, pretend like I called somebody, handed it back to you, and say, thanks a lot. Now I Can just later that evening go and then SIM swap you because I have the temporary transfer pin. Holy. You know, so I would need the account number in your mobile number but most likely I might already have that, but I would get it somehow. And this is the way the industries build is that I call it the, the mobile API matrix. And so when you port your number over to a, we're unplugging you from that. And so it's not that easy to, to port out. So we, we go through, when somebody wants to port out we go through 11 layers of verification. A couple of those layers or things that they don't see. But the obvious ones and we don't want to publicize the ones.

Bryce (27:12)

Right. I was going to say don't give away the secret sauce.

Mark Kreitzman (27:13)

Yeah. And we change them around. We do it in different orders and part of it depends on like what kind of answer they gave to one. So it may change. But some things are obvious like what email do we have for you on file? And, and, and you know, you don't confirm whether they got it right or wrong usually. But we may send an email to that and say can you please tell me what that email says or can you respond back to it? If they respond back to it, that may be something that we look at, hidden header information on it, things like that, what's your payment method? And we may, we may do something like send a credit to the credit card on file and say you have to verify that when you do port out it's a cooling off, it's a two week cooling off period. So when somebody wants to port out they just tell us and then there's this two week period where somebody would have to fake being that person for two weeks. And it's only like five, 10 minutes of total effort for the person to go through this process. But the, the, the two week cooling off period is that, that last resort because if you want to go fishing in Canada and you're out where there's not no phone for like 10 days and when you come back. Right. You want to make sure your phone's still there. And, and so it's not meant to be difficult. It's really just meant to make sure that we never release somebody's number to the wrong person. And, and so everything we do for verification is human. To do it any other way is, it's just kind of scary and you know, because AI is getting, getting very, very good. And we also allow customers to create their own step too. And, and so they can create A passphrase. They can, they could have a second email account that says like this is.

Bryce (28:56)

My physical device, like a Yubikey or something.

Mark Kreitzman (28:58)

Maybe. So we, it would not be a Yubikey. I mean we, we allow Yubikeys on your customer account and we do recommend. So people have to use an authenticator app or Yubikey on their account with the fani. And, and certainly being able to log into your account is potentially one of those ways to be able to verify yourself. But that, that is the key. It's that it's, we've stripped the tech out. We don't, we don't give free Hulu, free Disney plus, Netflix, whatever exists these days because that's data collection, data profiling and we're really trying to, to limit the exposure of people's personal information and, and the ability for somebody to social engineer.

Unknown (29:43)

Well, you know, this is interesting because over here we're always talking about risk management and risk mitigation and you know, protect yourself from downside in your portfolios and your trades and this and that. And if you think about it, you know, this is really just another form of risk management, but specifically when it comes to the security side and it's arguably one of the most important areas of crypto. I mean, Bryce, you said this at the top of the hour, but when it comes to keeping your crypto safe, like that is such a crucial part of this. It's not just protecting your portfolio from downside, but you know, what's the ultimate downside? It's not a pullback, it's not a market crash. It's your entire portfolio going poop overnight and someone getting access to things that they shouldn't. So this is really a more honed in view of taking risk management to the property level, especially to people who have any kind of, of, of sizable account.

Mark Kreitzman (30:41)

And even for us, like we, we promote, you know, using cold storage and, and certainly our message is different for the crypto people than the non crypto because even if you're not into crypto, you can still be a target. And, and just because they can't get into your cold storage doesn't mean you're not a target. They could, they could get into your icloud. Your email still do devastating things for you? Because I have to, I, when they got into one of my emails, I have to think about it every day of like, did they, did they get tax records? Did they get medical records? Did they see early wire distributions and things like that? Like, and, and, and so yeah, you Just crypto is very painful when it's stolen because it's basically gone. But, you know, there's all the other things that can happen to you as well. I talk to people that have been blackmailed and you know, just like their icloud account and they call up and they're like, I got hacked. And, and they think that we're some kind of expert in, you know, blackmail procedures. And, and do they have to worry? And it's like, well, let's get you on a fawnie to start with. And, and there's all kinds of reasons people are getting sim swapped. Sometimes it's harassment, sometimes it's ex boyfriends. There's a lot of people claiming that, you know, their spouses, their ex spouses are, are going after them. And, and so it's not always about crypto, but losing that crypto is painful. And, and then also one thing that people won't realize is that all the carriers have slipped in arbitration clauses. So if you get SIM swapped and you lose, say, a hundred thousand of Bitcoin out of your Coinbase account, then you want to sue somebody. And what you're going to find is that it's, you're going to have to go to arbitration court and you're going to, they're, they're. The odds of winning are probably greater than 50%, but you're going to get about 30% on the dollar. Yeah. After you have to pay your attorney out of that. And, and the carrier's defense. So I've been asked to be an expert witness multiple times and I've never said no or, excuse me, I've never said yes because I don't want to go against the carriers that were, you know, partnering with and, and, and we partner with. We, we sell all of them in some way. But the attorneys are telling me that the carrier's defense is that this has been normalized and that it happens to every carrier. And therefore, because it's normalized, we shouldn't have to pay 100%. People need to be aware of this and secure themselves. And so that's why this sort of 30% win rate is the way it is is because the, the judges get convinced that it's a normalized issue.

Bryce (33:26)

And I'm curious, you know, so the security aspect is huge, which we all get, but are there other benefits? Like, you know, like you said, you partner with all these different partners. Say, for instance, I'm on one network now, I'm in a dead zone and I can't get any Service. But sometimes like you know, my wife, if she has a different cell phone provider, like oh well she'll have service. It's like I wish I had one carrier that connected to all the different services is and it sounds like that's kind of what a FONNY is doing. But I don't want to jump to conclusions.

Mark Kreitzman (33:56)

No, that's a, that's a great question. And that was going to be the next thing I wanted to throw in which is we, we now have officially launched our, our dual SIM E SIM setup. So let's say you, you get AT AND T is your primary carrier with the Fonny. So your SIM one is going to be AT and T and that's going to be voice, SMS and data. And then we also provide you with a second data only SIM. It would be an eSIM. And so it's a second data only ESIM and it roams across almost 500 carriers around the world. Oh wow. So if you're in the, if you were in the US if you were in say San Diego you might be using AT&T data and then you hit Newport beach and it's Verizon and then you hit Carmel or something and it's T Mobile and so it switches around so that we, we rolled this out, we tested it with about 2 or 300 of our customers and basically they said this is like a game changer. One of the teams that just signed up with us is a, a team in southern, in southern part of US that does operations in Mexico and Central America and I can't tell talk about the details but they, they trialed us and they went into Mexico and they were using AT&T direct and they also had, all their phones were using at&t direct and they had one phone set up with at&tifoni and then this second data esin that was roaming and they said again they were another one that said this is a game changer because we lost AT&T connectivity in Mexico and your, the data ESIM picked up too. And so they picked up two other carriers and were able to stay in communication. So this, it works that way all over the world. If you went to Thailand you'd roam on True dtac, AIs, Australia. Wherever you're going to go it's going to roam on three to four carriers and it will serve LTE or 5G if it's being served wherever you are in the world and it's it and we give also 10 gigabytes of free international data. Roaming is part of the our price.

Bryce (36:03)

That was my next question was I was like, there's got to be a catch there because international is always so expensive.

Mark Kreitzman (36:09)

Yeah. So if you have AT&T with us again and you fly to El Salvador, you go to Bitcoin beach, you're going to have 10 gigabytes and it's going to roam on, you know, three or four carriers there. And you go to, you go to Bali, Indonesia, same thing. And so what we're trying to provide is global connectivity that gives you this SIM swap protection and the privacy from all the stores and resellers and from the prying eyes. Now we also enable WI fi calling globally. So if you were to go to Bitcoin beach again in El Salvador, you're going to get the free data. But you're also, if you're behind WI fi, you, if somebody were to call your mobile number, it's going to ring and you can talk for free and you can also call back to the US for free. So when you're behind a WI fi, your phone acts as if you're sitting in the US and there's no additional costs. And then for those people that have an iPhone 13 or above, because Afoni enables all these features, the iPhone 13 and above in the new iOS, they've added this feature that allows us to do the WI fi calling over the second data esim. And so now if you've got an iPhone 15 and you go to El Salvador, you don't even need a WI fi connection. Holy. No additional costs, you're going to be able to make phone calls back to the US you're going to be able to receive and then for $15 a month, you can join our world calling plan. And that way if you're a bitcoin beach, you can make local calls, you can call Spain, Germany, all over the world and there's no additional cost. So if you've got the iPhone 13 and above and you travel outside the US a couple times, like we're an absolute no brainer in that case. Like even if you don't anyone, if you don't even own any crypto, it's like just seamless works. We've got hedge funds that have people that have employees from Cayman Islands to us, Canada, Australia, Bali, they're a US like crypto hedge fund and they all want us mobile numbers, they all get the iPhone 13 and above, they use our dual ESIM strategy and they all operate as if they are in the US and it's a beautiful solution and it keeps Them secure and, and there's a couple things just sort of kind of get into the nerdy type tech. And I don't know if you guys have ever heard of like cell tower spoofing and MZ catchers and things like that.

Bryce (38:35)

I've heard of the spoofing for the cell towers or the spoofing of the WI fi where basically people set up fake hotspots and you're like, oh, I'm at the airport, let me connect to airport WI Fi. Not realizing some random hacker renamed a hotspot airport WI Fi and anything you connect to, he's going to be able to get your info.

Mark Kreitzman (38:51)

Yeah, you definitely have to watch out for that like WI fi anywhere in the world. You can do a denial of search. You just duplicate the WI FI network, right? You can just call it the same name and then, then denial of service on the, on the original, you know, Starbucks Cafe or something and, and then capture that. But cell tower spoofing works the same way, except that they can be, you know, 100 meters away, possibly even more, if they've got a strong enough IMSI catcher. Now, the IMSI catchers are dangerous on 2G and 3G networks. So the reason we resell AT&T and Verizon from this, from the beginning is because they were, they turned off their 2G and 3G network. And so you can't use these cell tower spoofers to lower, to downgrade you to the 2G, 3G because there's nowhere to go. And so you're going to stay on that 4G LTE 5G and you're going to have more protection from these cell tower spoofing. And the only thing that could possibly do, and this goes for any carrier because you can't mask the IMSI number and the imea. When you wake up a phone, it has to transmit the information of the cell towers to say who it is. This is my IMSI number, this is my AMEA id. And every carrier works the same way the first time it boots up. So they could capture the EMSI number, for example, and the EMSI number would tell them what country, what carrier and the rest of it's the individual identifier. And then if they've got buddies at the carrier, then they could call them up and say who owns this MZ number? And that's one of the reasons why privacy at these stores and with their call centers not having your full information is very helpful. That's why the privacy in those stores matters big time.

Bryce (40:35)

And I mean what, what does something like this cost? We haven't even talked really about much costs overall, but I think, you know, people listening, they're like, man, they got a bunch of high net worth individuals that use this. Hedge fund managers, this is probably something that's thousands of dollars a month for this level of security. What kind of is the cost structure here?

Mark Kreitzman (40:54)

The $99 and then go through the process of getting activated. Your second month is going to be free. And then we also give a 60 day money back guarantee. So on the 60th day, if you're like, you know what, you didn't satisfy me, then you get your, you get your money, you get that $99 you paid back. I love it.

Bryce (41:13)

And yes, for everybody listening, that is Ifani E f a n I.com crypto101. And again, we'll link that to the show notes. All you got to do is click it from your computer, your laptop, wherever you could type it into a URL. Again, that's efani e f a n I.com crypto 101 mark. I mean this is incredible. And I think people who are listening are, are excited and, and maybe even curious if there's any war stories or crazy stories of like you guys in the trenches fighting off a hack or any, any, you know, stories from your customers that you could share with us how successful this platform has been.

Mark Kreitzman (41:58)

Yeah, well, a couple. I'll share. One story which a lot of people don't realize is that you remember when the Bitcoin ETF was announced early?

Bryce (42:05)

Oh yeah, I remember that.

Mark Kreitzman (42:07)

Yeah. So, so that was a.

Bryce (42:08)

From the SEC's Twitter. Yeah, their X account.

Mark Kreitzman (42:13)

Yeah, so that was a port, that was the number swap. So somebody did a SIM swap, use that to take over the rex.com and then publish that. So sometimes it's about trying to steal your crypto, but it can be about just. That's crazy. Right? So I mean you think about the hundreds of millions, if not billions that were won and lost that day. And so if you were the person that could control that. And so that's kind of crazy. So in terms of like us being in the heat of the battle. So you know, we've never had anybody get even close to executing a SIM swap on us. But what we have done is participated in people in the middle of getting a SIM swap and we have jumped in and, and on their carrier and we're able to grab their mobile number back to Afani. And so it can, it can be scary and people have no idea. They're trying to call their carrier, trying to call Verizon. Verizon doesn't want to help them because they go into liability protection. So they call us up and they're like, yeah, I'm not a customer, but I'm being sim swapped, like right now.

Bryce (43:21)

And I'll be a customer if you guys for life. If you could get me off of this sim swap right now.

Mark Kreitzman (43:26)

Yeah, yeah, basically that's kind, that's, that's what happens. So, and, and one of those stories was Charlie Schrem. Oh, wow. So early on, when we were, when we were pretty young, Charlie Schremm was in the middle of getting a SIM swap. He wasn't a fan, a customer. He was direct with the carrier. And this was happening at like 1 or 2 in the morning. And he called up and our, in our. And at the time it was only three of us. We were still young. And, and our CEO founder jumped in and was able to pull his number back. And, and then Charlie became a supporter of ours and invited our CEO on his podcast. He's talked about us a number of times. And, and, and so there's been a number of cases like that. It's, it's, it's. You don't want to rely on it because when you call in, it's like, depends on who's active at that time. Right.

Bryce (44:18)

Because you want to be preventative, not reactive in this.

Mark Kreitzman (44:20)

Yeah. So we can't ever commit that, that we can do that every time. And, and, and, and things get crazy. Like, we had one guy call in who said that he was on Verizon, he gets SIM swapped. And it took him, he said it took him about 30 minutes to get to a phone. Then calls Verizon and he says, like, hey, I think my mobile account's been stolen away. And he gives them the number and they're like, oh, we don't even own that mobile number. And he's like, what do you mean? I've been a customer of yours for like 10 years. And Verizon, when they go into liability protection mode, Verizon wasn't even able to tell him what carrier it got ported to. So somebody stole his number.

Bryce (44:59)

What a racket.

Mark Kreitzman (45:00)

You know, they stole his number. So somebody else stole it as a Verizon account. And then within that time period of being able to call, he, he switched it to another carrier. So he called AT and T. They didn't, they didn't own it. And this was right before. This was right before T Mobile and Sprint. Had finalized the merger, Their, their merger. And T Mobile said they didn't have it. And Sprint said yeah, we, that's our number, but you're not the owner of it. And so it took him like seven days. And he was telling me about how he had to chase his accounts for a week of keep changing passwords and things like that. And, and so these are the kind of things that, that can happen. We, I had it, there was a month there where I had a number of people calling in saying they got SIM swapped and, and they said that they would get a text on their phone that says we're, we're going to do the support change over, like you know, press here or something. If you, if this, you didn't approve this and then all of a sudden it would just like so many text messages would just come pouring in and they're sitting there trying to scroll back to that. And so these, these hackers find out, you know, unique and different ways to bypass their procedures. And it's like they put up, and they'll put up a new one and then they just figure out how to get around it. And one of the popular ones now is they'll go into like I can go into a phone store, like if I know what carrier you guys use, I can, I can go into their phone store and then pretend I'm going to buy a phone and use that incentive of buying the phone to get them to sort of soften up because I'm not doing a SIM swap. All I want to do is buy a phone off of your account and let's say they're like, oh, we can't verify you if you don't have your birthday. So I'm going to walk out of the store, I'm going to go get your birthday, go to the next store and I'm going to figure out over time like how can I get verified by you or in your name. And then once I get a phone in your, in your, off your account then I call back later and say oh you know what, I got this new phone and of course it's going to be on your account. And through that process I might have added another email, I might have added something to it. So when I'm actually verifying, I'm verifying real information. So it's no longer social engineering at that point. And there's a great video from DEFCON where this, where this expert social engineer took over, took control over the reporters mobile number live on tv. But once you, if you can get a phone in somebody else's name. Then it becomes not really a SIM swap. It's like you call them up, you're calling them from a phone, they see the IMEA device on your account. So now I want to switch this phone number over to my new phone.

Unknown (47:44)

The whole thing's eye opening, you know, it really is. And when we think about like traditional production, it's like make sure you put your seed phrase on a piece of paper and not in your email and make sure you don't like, you know, do silly things. And this is one of those where it's, it's seriously entirely outside of your control. If someone wants to come after you, it really doesn't matter to an extent. Right. Unless you're like with a fani or with something like this, there's very little it seems like you can do as an independent.

Mark Kreitzman (48:15)

Right.

Unknown (48:15)

If you're just going to say I'm going to take precautions, it seems like that that's really not going to be enough. And if someone wants to come after you and do this and you don't have a service or a protection like this, then you're kind of just at the will and mercy of like hoping it doesn't happen. Or, or it just does. Like again, there's just not, it doesn't seem like there's a lot that can protect you.

Mark Kreitzman (48:36)

Yeah, yeah, Prince Princeton did a study on this and anybody can Google it, but they, they, they created 50 accounts, they had a time period and then they went and they SIM swapped 39 of those 50 accounts. They did it across the top five carriers in the US and the only reason they didn't get more is because the, the time period ended. But even for the ones that they didn't get SIM swapped at that time, when it ended, they got start date, birth dates, information that was given on these accounts. So, so one set of people set up the accounts and another set of people comes in and, and then attempts to SIM swap them. And so that's like a 79.8% rate of successful SIM swaps. And so, you know, the only thing really in our favor is now is that there's so many people that own crypto and so there's so many of us that that helps kind of protect us. But on the downside is if I was a SIM swap hacker and I was pretty serious, like I'm going to go to the bitcoin conference in Miami, you know, trade, trade business cards because, because everybody hands out their mobile number and you know, their WhatsApp and and all of that. And so people don't really think about the fact that their mobile number is now more important than their Social Security number. Yeah, because, because you just once, once your crypto's stolen, they, they have the ability to, you know, hide it. Yeah. Transfers.

Bryce (50:09)

And I'm hopeful that, you know, these are all, like Brennan said. I think you said, a great eye opening.

Mark Kreitzman (50:15)

Right.

Bryce (50:15)

Like, that's, like, that's the perfect I, you know, name to encapsulate what this discussion has. But I hope that it's eye opening and then the, the, the second reaction isn't fear and, and paralysis and I'm not going to do anything, but it's eye opening. And then your reaction is, wow, I need to do something about this. And so hopefully everybody listening, you know, really does at least, at the very least, just go to afani.com, check it out, get to know more. And we would be very appreciative if you used that code, if you sign up crypto101. But, but Mark, I, I really am hopeful that, you know, folks listen to this and they don't get scared into paralysis, but they get scared into action. And I think we did a great job of kind of spurring that on. Is there anything that we didn't mention yet about Afani, what you're working on, anything you want the, the viewers to leave with as we part today?

Mark Kreitzman (51:10)

Yeah, so we're going to always continue investing in more security on the mobile side. So we're going to, we're the, they're the cellular security geeks, so to say we are going to come out with in next, by the end of this year, what we call Black Seal. And that's going to be a premium service. It's going to add even more security and more privacy to people's mobile phones. And, you know, beyond that, just a couple of things that people need to not do. And, and so like I said before, don't set up your login for your, for your exchanges and your online wallets with the same email that you use for everything else. Like, that's the common pattern. They'll, they'll set up a, an Android phone with a Gmail account and then use that same email to set up their coinbase and so spread things out, make it as hard as you can for people. And, and then hopefully if you do become a target, that maybe at some point they might skip over you if you just, if you just make it more difficult. Even if you don't use a Fonny, the crypto really relies on security. I think it, I think it's the one last thing to me that really needs to be fixed before it's just mass market. I play golf with guys that are older, that are now buying crypto, and, and every once in a while I'll run into people that are, you know, somebody will be like 60 years old and they're using a ledger, but I'll run in, I'll play golf with people. They're like, they're scared to death of moving their crypto onto these hard wallets or, you know, cold wallet. And, and so people need to get over that and, and do it and learn how to do it. Yeah, totally.

Bryce (52:51)

It's, it's a generational thing. I remember my, my dad told me a story, you know, as I was getting into crypto and all that stuff. He's like, yeah, it's new forms of money, all this kind of stuff. Your grandma would refuse to use an ATM for the longest time when they first came out. She goes, you know, I'm gonna put my hard earned money and paycheck into this machine and trust that my banker's gonna see it. That's insane. And like, that's how it's a generational shift. So here, like, crypto is, is, is similar thing, man. Mark, we really appreciate it and we, we definitely want to have you back on again soon. People know where to find you at Ifani. E f a n I.com crypto101 to secure that 99 off discount code. Everybody watching, thank you so much. Again, check them out. Mark Kreitzman, thank you for joining us, General manager of Afani. Until next time, my friend.

Mark Kreitzman (53:44)

Yep, thank you. Appreciate it. Warning.

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