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ABC reports about a worrying scam involving phone number porting. The attacker finds the phone number, name, and date of birth, and other easy-to-find information about a first victim and uses that information to port their number to a new service under control of the attacker. This enables them to access the victim's Facebook account, which is used in a social engineering attack against the victim's friends, who become new victims when they hand over their banking details, which are then used to transfer money and make purchases.
This attack obviously works better with the large amount of personal information people are putting on social networks. But how well would this kind of thing work against the average Soylentil?
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Telco Union Officials Lured Into Identity Fraud Scam
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Friday January 20 2017, @09:05PM
Phone porting laws in the USA are different. I deal with them on a more or less routine basis.
In order for me to successfully port any Soylentils phone number (assuming you are in the USA), I will need:
1) A fully signed LOA, which is a specific document signed by the customer explicitly stating that the phone number in question (along with local and long distance) will be transferred from the losing carrier to the new carrier. It's a legal document with MY name on it along with the Soylentil's.
2) The MOST recent phone bill that has all of the information from the phone bill matching the LOA.
IF somebody did game the system, I would be on the hook for hefty fines for each and every phone number that failed #1 & #2. So the new carrier, and quite possibly the VoIP provider, will be on the hook for damages. I don't know of too many carriers that are also the VoIP provider. They may be white labeling, and the carrier is usually very large and the one to receive the phone number. VoIP providers are often just servicing these numbers, and not actually holding them.
Which is WHY I've not seen ported phone numbers for just anyone, and not over the Internet either. You need to be a paying customer first, which usually involves a purchase of hardware, and in many cases a site eval when a business is doing the porting. Obviously, it's not too terribly hard to contrive a reason for calling the customer ON THAT PHONE NUMBER and speaking with them about their decision to port their phone number. "Ohh, Mr. Johnson! Glad I caught you. Thanks so much for switching your service and we look forward to serving you sir!". CHECK. Number verified.
If something like this gains traction in the USA, which is doubtful, it will become slightly harder to port a phone number, but not that much harder. The losing carrier may put an additional check with the consumer beforehand, like some new carriers already do.
Those porting fines are not fucking around. They want number porting to happen correctly or not at all. So the reality is that are three victims with these scams, and one of the victims is large enough to fight back.
Lastly, if you are with AT&T, fear not. The legal limit is 14 days to transfer a land line and 24 hours to transfer a cellular number. AT&T don't give a shit about none of that nonsense, and you're left with praying. The number of AT&T phone ports I've had last over a month are numerous. You're probably safe :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by nitehawk214 on Friday January 20 2017, @10:49PM
I have had people complain about how many steps it took to port their phone number.
"Well would you want it to be so easy that anyone could steal your number?"
That usually shuts them up.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh