We’ve all bought a new cell phone and wanted to keep our number. The process is called porting and it could leave you open to being hacked.
If a hacker can port your number to a different phone, that could wreak havoc on all the important information you keep on your phone including bank account log-ins.
It happened a month ago to a local victim.
Finding that he could neither make calls nor send texts, he went straight to his provider. Somebody from out of state had gone into another provider, bought a cell phone and moved the victim’s number to their new device.
Alan explained how two factor authentication is designed to keep logins safe but can be cracked with phone number porting.
In this case the bad guys had ported the phone number, stolen the password and was getting that two-factor text code to login to apps, like bank accounts.
Alan says there are 2 things you can do to stop this from happening:
- 1) Log into your cell phone provider's page where you can block your phone from being ported.
- 2) If you suspect your number has already been ported, remote wipe your iPhone by logging into your iCloud and erase your data.
For an android phone, log into your Google account linked to your phone and follow the prompts from there.
Alan said you could well have a hard time proving to the phone company which is the right person.
