T-Mobile Pushing New Security Layer for Port-Out Scamming

I happen to be a T-Mobile customer, and apparently the company has identified "Port-Out Scams" to be a big enough of an issue to prompt its entire customer base to add another level of security to their accounts. At least now I have one more reason to justify making sure I have no banking information or applications running on my Pixel 2. You do have to call into support to activate this feature, and the entire process took me less than 5 minutes. Once you have this in place, if the process of porting your phone number to a new carrier is initiated, the new carrier will be required to validate the request with T-Mobile using the 6-to-15 digit passcode that you placed on the account. This new PIN does not change any of your current password of PIN credentials on your account. Besides the security issues of getting port-scammed, it is highly likely that if that happened you might never get your phone number back. Enjoy.


Fraudsters are attempting to compromise personal bank accounts by taking over and transferring phone numbers from one wireless provider to another. It’s a scheme that is affecting the entire wireless industry.

These types of scams should be treated as harshly as murder due to the damage they cause to so many victims.

Nobody "accidently" commits a scam like this, it takes intent and planning.

We just can't have anything nice anymore.

And yeah, I agree that a little friend of mine wearing a copper jacket would be fair compensation to the fraudster.

Not to be confused with the use of nmap.

so they have to have the account number and your date of birth, and thats it to port out your number.

interesting.

Fraudsters are attempting to compromise personal bank accounts by taking over and transferring phone numbers from one wireless provider to another. It’s a scheme that is affecting the entire wireless industry.

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Then why the hell did I need to give some randomly long PIN, that my wife only knows, to switch from one carrier to another and keep my phone number?

My coworker just got hit by this for $1000. So it's not something to mess with. I'd add the layer asap.

T-Mobil found his number at Metro-PCS. Took 1.5 hours at the t-mobil store.

This is going on at the other carriers too but TMo seems more susceptible. The fraudsters have used social engineering to get into accounts as well.