If your phone switches to SOS mode without you doing anything, then that’s the first sign that you’re a victim of an illegal phone porting scam. What is a phone porting scam? It’s when a person successfully manages to get your phone number ported to another telco provider and therefore another mobile device.
The Outcome of Phone Porting Scams
As mentioned in our recent mobile security article, our entire lives are on our phones. We use our phones to make and receive payments, subscribe to services such as Amazon, Netflix etc., login to social media and messaging apps, to work and so much more.
As a result, if your phone were to be ported the scammer would be able to access all these services using your mobile number. Think of the number of times that you were sent an SMS to verify your identity, to enable two-factor authentication or to receive an OTP from your bank to make a payment. All that is now in their hands!
It’s scary, I know. And I bet you’re already contemplating deleting all your banking apps from your phone and removing all your credit cards from your wallet. At least that was my first thought. Without wanting to add to the stress levels there’s not much you can do about it either. Phone porting is legal and, therefore, telcos have put effort into making the process as easy as possible to allow someone to change telco providers while retaining the same phone number.
In some cases, you might get a text from your telco saying you’ve requested for your number to be ported to a different network. If you ever get one of those texts unexpectedly, it’s crucial that you contact your provider immediately.
Ways to Prevent Phone Porting Scams
We already said there’s not a whole lot you can do to prevent phone porting scams. However, we’ve put together a few tips to prevent it happening to you as much as possible:
- Beware of phishing scams – information such as your phone number can be collected via a phishing scam. Never click on any links you don’t recognise or on newsletters you never subscribed to. And if you do, never input any personal information.
- Increase the privacy on your social media – information such as name, email and phone number can be extracted from social media platforms. Increase your profile’s privacy settings and make sure that your personal information is not viewable to all.
- Use an authenticator app – start using something other than your mobile number as a two-factor authentication method – such as an authenticator app – so that someone won’t be able to access your account even if they receive your text messages
- Request a PIN from your telco – requesting your telco to put a PIN on your account can help prevent unauthorised porting and using a variety of strong passwords on different accounts can make it more difficult for scammers to get in.
If you would like more advice on how to make your devices, network and overall infrastructure more secure reach out to our team for a free consultation.
