Phone porting scam

So how often do you use your cell phone to recover your username or password? I am sure most of us use this method to recovery such information. What if I told you there is a way that fraudsters could access your information through this recovery process as well. Well there is the method is called porting or port out scamming.  This is a new type of scam which has currently taking place across the nation. We have seen that the ultimate protectors of our personal information must be us. Some carriers are taking the necessary steps to protect our personal information from scams such as this one. We utilize the safe guards provided by cell phone carriers so we can protect our information from this type of scam.

The porting or out of porting scam works like this. A scammer has certain information about you such as your name, phone number, address social security number and date of birth any one of these pieces of information can be used or combination of this type of information. The scammer will then contact your carrier pretending to be you they will claim your cell phone was damage or lost. The cell phone company will then transfer your number to the new phone that’s when the real damage occurs.

The scammer will then log in to your banking or credit cards accounts online and use the call my cell phone verification method to gain access to your accounts by requesting reset codes to your user name and passwords.  You will not be aware of the theft until it’s too late in most cases.

Since this type of theft has been in the news lately cell phone carriers are providing more security steps in the cell phone porting process. You can check with your cell phone company on what safe guards are available. Some will offer you a PIN or verification question to be answered correctly before porting the phone number to the new phone. When you attempt to make a call and the call could be made in the emergency call status chances are your phone has been compromised. You should contact your carrier immediately. 

I hope this post was helpful as always please leave a comment

Mark Carbajal