topic Re: Cell phone porting scams in Get Support

Cell phone porting scams

teldridge — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 11:44:57 GMT

I've been hearing about a scam where scammers are able to port over your cell phone number and then use it to reset passwords and access accounts requiring 2-factor authentication.

What is protecting my Public Mobile account from a scammer porting my number to another company? What info would the scammer need to do this and are there any additonal security measures I can set up (maybe a special porting pin) that could prevent someone porting the number?

Re: Cell phone porting scams

ShawnC13 — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 06:08:43 GMT

@teldridge wrote:
I've been hearing about a scam where scammers are able to port over your cell phone number and then use it to reset passwords and access accounts requiring 2-factor authentication.

What is protecting my Public Mobile account from a scammer porting my number to another company? What info would the scammer need to do this and are there any additonal security measures I can set up (maybe a special porting pin) that could prevent someone porting the number?

I believe they would need your account number, or your phone number and PIN. Well this is what you need to port to PM.

Re: Cell phone porting scams

teldridge — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 06:09:23 GMT

Here is some info on how the scam works:

https://clark.com/scams-rip-offs/phone-porting-scam/

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gy8bxy/t-mobile-text-warning-phone-hijacking-number-port-out-scam

Re: Cell phone porting scams

computergeek541 — Thu, 28 Feb 2019 06:46:50 GMT

@teldridge wrote:
I've been hearing about a scam where scammers are able to port over your cell phone number and then use it to reset passwords and access accounts requiring 2-factor authentication.

What is protecting my Public Mobile account from a scammer porting my number to another company? What info would the scammer need to do this and are there any additonal security measures I can set up (maybe a special porting pin) that could prevent someone porting the number?

Personally, I do not like how Public Mobile (and all Telus brands) immediately assigns the requested to be ported in phone number. They do this before the request is even approved or rejected by the other carrier.

Some other carriers only change the number at that carrier when the other carrier has approved the request and everything has been finalized.

Unfoturantely, this means taht anyone who know your phone number, can request a number port in, even if it he or she is not the legitimate owner/user of that that phone number.

What I can tell you is that banks do use the outgoing call display information as a identity verification tool. This means that if someone requests a port in of the phone number that is linked to your bank account/credit card, the bank will assume that the imposter is you. It's not an automatic thing, but when the phone number matches, they will use that as a security check.

Unless the person has your IMEI, account PIN, or account number, the number porting will fail.

Companies that verifiy your phone number by sending a text message to you will fail for the person trying to do that because incoming calls and texts won't work.

I am not completely sure why Public Mobile, Telus, and Koodo all do number porting in this manner, but what I can say that neither Freedom Mobile nor Rogers/Fido/Chatr do it like this.

As for a "stolen"/borrowed number being used in the outgoing caler ID, there are easier ways for people than to do this than to initiate a fake incoming number port (that will fail). There are websites out there that will allow the outgoing phone numbers to be set to anything that the person wishes.

Ironcially, a few days ago, a customers mistakenly posted a picture of his account number.