topic Re: cell phone porting scam in Get Support

cell phone porting scam

waynemc54 — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 16:07:08 GMT

Hello,

I have read that scammers had stolen someones phone number by fowarding their number and victim recieves a text message "Rogers has received a request to transfer your phone number to another Service Provider, If you did not authorize, contact Rogers urgently…”

Does Public Mobile send a text if someone tries to transfer your number and is there a phone number to phone Public Mobile to stop it.

Thanks for any help

Wayne

Re: cell phone porting scam

gblackma — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 11:28:54 GMT

@waynemc54 there is no telephone number. You have to come here and contact the moderators through Simon or private message here. The answer comes back here through the private message envelope top right of your screen. And officially may take between 24 to 48 hours. PM does text you a message here is the link to their answer to fraudelant porting https://www.publicmobile.ca/en/bc/get-help/articles/port-fraud-protection

@waynemc54 wrote:
Hello,
I have read that scammers had stolen someones phone number by fowarding their number and victim recieves a text message "Rogers has received a request to transfer your phone number to another Service Provider, If you did not authorize, contact Rogers urgently…”
Does Public Mobile send a text if someone tries to transfer your number and is there a phone number to phone Public Mobile to stop it.

Thanks for any help
Wayne

Re: cell phone porting scam

darlicious — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 11:33:21 GMT

@waynemc54 Here's a link to public mobiles policy in regards to your question....

https://www.publicmobile.ca/en/bc/get-help/articles/port-fraud-protection

You can also read this thread that discusses this related issue....

Re: Does this Koodo issue affect PM customers too?

Re: cell phone porting scam

Nezgar — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 22:10:06 GMT

Hi @waynemc54, there's technically only three things a fraudster needs to steal your phone number from Public Mobile (and most other carriers)

Your Phone number
Your account number (seen at the top right when logged into the selfserve site)
Your exact name as entered in your selfserve account

So as a precautionary step, one easy thing you can do right now to help thwart any attempt to port-out your number from Public Mobile is to alter your name as entered in the selfserve account slightly (add some extra letters to your first and last names), which will cause a port-out request to fail if they use your expected real name. This name is not otherwise used for any purpose after your account has been setup.

Cheers, and hopefully noone here has to deal with this scam happening to them!

PS: Also if possible, don't use SMS as a backup method for authenticating critical accounts like your bank, email, social media etc. Use authenticator apps like Microsoft Authenticator, Google Authenticator, etc.