Oh god… kid lost her phone (thankfully, temporarily) which sent off a mad scramble to lock this and that (she was not sure if the phone fell asleep right away when she lost it, so someone who would have found it right away theoretically could have made a bunch of damage - and could have locked her out of her mobile account). This made me think about how important our mobile phones and their numbers have become… like a social security number, almost!
Getting too much sleep at night? Just read this article! https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/technology/sim-swap-jack-dorsey-hack.html
Apparently of the big 3 phone carriers (no idea about Sprint), Verizon has the best protection against sim swaps, T-mobile has some protection available but they don’t advertise it or offer it by default, and AT&T is the worst— just a 4-digit pin that an employee can be bribed to give up.
2-factor authentication turns out to pose a huge risk if someone else has control of your phone number.
Also every single time I log onto ATT, it offers to get rid of the pin. Does it think security is a bad idea?
@CIEE83 Ugh. Thanks for the link. I’m going to have to think through some of my security measures.
I have ATT and I have never been asked to ditch my PIN.
I have a google voice number I generally use to sign up for things/as a contact, so my real number is somewhat hidden.
Of course tat means my google account has to be super-secure - for that and many other reasons.
Had a couple of ideas that would make me sleep better at night… one, I have a prepaid phone that I use only for work calls when I am calling from my home. I made that the recovery phone number on my gmail account. That way if anyone ever ported my regular cell phone number, they would be unable use a text message to get into my gmail account and from there gain access to financial accounts. It also occurred to me that another way to keep a hacker from gaining access to a main email account would be to use a family member’s cell for the recovery phone number instead of one’s own. Not perfect protection, but a lot better than using one’s own phone number!
I had a card compromised once, $22 worth of Taco Bell. Not only a thief but one with horrible taste! Still can’t figure out how.