Stolen cell number?

[twinmum]

Hello,

I just got a call from a woman who said she got a call from someone using my cell number saying they are from service canada and implying they have done some kind of criminal acitivity, taxes or something like that, she wasn't clear.  She informed me my identity has been stolen, because my number came up on her phone and it wasn't me she was speaking to the first time. 

She took the time to call me personally and tell me this, otherwise I would not have known this. The police station personnel told me I may have to change my number? They said Public Mobile should be able to look into this and let me know. I am not sure whether they are making calls on my account that is going to result in unknown charges to me that are made by these people?

Please advice what I should do, and how I can have someone look at the activity going on with my phone number.

I was getting strange calls the other night from strange number from El Salvador.

Thank you in advance!

[beth1791]

This has been happening to me too. I changed my voicemail to let people know a scammer is using my phone number without my permission and that it's not actually me calling them. I wasn't going to change my phone number.

[dude65]

In this day and age, I would not trust any one phoning you if your unsure who it is. These people will try phish any information out of you. Like you said they were saying that the phone number was stolen, would services Canada be calling you? Red flags should be going up. Just be very careful what personal info you give over the phone. If its legit, usually these people already have that info, so why would they ask for it..

[Nezgar]

Just an FYI... It is trivial for anyone using commodity VoIP providers or business phone systems to arbitrarily send any number & name they want as the outgoing caller ID... I've seen it myself. It's the same reason Google hangouts dialer is able to make calls show with your own caller ID...

Also, because of that never use the option in your voicemail to skip having to enter a PIN if "calling from your own number"... someone forging your number in outgoing caller ID can sail right in.

[kselmak]

They do @winston11 

If you call back half the time it will be the number that is unassigned or even with no service (like 6476471234 this one is not up for grabs as I understand)

It's just game of chance if you do or don't get hit today

[winston11]

Wow, I actually thought these scam callers actually use random made up numbers. Glad to know this.

[kselmak]

@twinmum 

I wouldn't change the number of I was you

The new number can become a victim of similar scam at any point

It's kinda like return address, you can't prevent somebody from putting your address as the return address on their envelope. If you find out who it is you can do something about it afterwards, but you can't prevent it.

Good news is that they will probably stop using your number in one day

Your number will be blocked by bunch of people you dont know anyways.

[twinmum]

Thank you so much!

[BearFBI]

@twinmum Web means data usage.

[Dunkman]

@twinmum 

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@twinmum wrote:

I just went on my usage and there is listed "web" 10 times? Does anyone know what that means? It shows my incoming and outgoing calls, then it lists "web" ten times?

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@twinmum 

It means that your phone accessed your data.  Could be also a MMS message Ie, picture messaging/texts.  

[twinmum]

I just went on my usage and there is listed "web" 10 times? Does anyone know what that means? It shows my incoming and outgoing calls, then it lists "web" ten times?

[twinmum]

Thank you so much! I will take a look at my usage, and if everything is okay, I will continue with my same number. 

I prefer to keep my current number, as that is what I have used for over two-three years now. 

Yes, if they can do that with a new number, there would be no need to change at this time, as long as my account isn't compromised. 

I appreciate your information. 

I heard this is happening to quite a few people at this time.

[Anonymous]

 @twinmum 

Call your number and see if your phone rings. Answer it and see if you can hear anything else.

Scammer/spammers can do what they call "spoofing" of numbers. I guess they chose yours. But if your service is working fine as evidenced by the person very nicely calling you and you successfully answering then it's just your bad luck that they chose your number.

Change your self-serve password just in case.

[Dunkman · Accepted solution]

@twinmum 

Scammers are probably using your phone number on their call display when calling others.  They use other local number on their display so the person will answer the call.  That happened to me a few times in the past also.  It just eventually stopped.  You could check your usage history section in your self service account to see whether your plan actually did call the number.  I doubt it though......   

You could change your number, but it still can happen with the new number. Unfortunately, Public mobile can't really do anything about this situation.  With Public mobile, there will not be any extra charges since it is prepaid. To be on the safe side, you could change the password on your self service account.  

[Triguy]

To change your phone number: sign in to Self-Serve, select ‘Change Number' under 'My Profile' on the Overview page. Here, you can choose to select a new phone number or to transfer a wireless or wireline number from another provider.

You may also want to report this to a moderator.  Click on the question mark on the bottom right corner of the bottom right corner.