Not sure if this is the right place to post this but this can potentially impact you financially if you are a Tmobile user and don't call 611 to add an account password and port out protection to your line. Right now I'm going through the process of having all my credit cards cancelled, my checking account frozen and having to deal with the Chase Fraud department on a daily basis. So far they have been largely incompetent in their dealing with the matter with their weekend reps seeming a little clueless as to how to handle such cases to protect their customers.
Without port out protection it is possible for your number to be ported by a hacker to another carrier. The scary thing is how many services you have tied to your cell phone including email, banking services, shopping services, etc. With your cell phone number your email can potentially be hacked with a text verification. With a combination of email / your cell phone number your banking information can all be reset. Imagine you spend a lot of time to have a safe password for your banking and email and change them on a regular basis and someone gets around all that by just porting out your number from your carrier.
So if you are on Tmobile - think of a 6 digit minimum PIN number for your account password. Call 611 and ask to add Port Out Protection as well as an account password. Remember that password because it will be needed whenever you call Tmobile customer service or want to port your number out in the future. This only takes a minute and will save you a lot of hassle in the future. I believe ATT already has account passwords. I don't know anything about other carriers.
What I learned from the experience and would do differently. I would not have wasted so much time calling Tmobile trying to get my number back. Definitely still call so that Tmobile is notified of the fraudulent port because they need to open a fraudulent port case which will get your number shut down. But I think I was waiting on hold with them for over 45 minutes for stupid things that were not necessary. I thought they could port the number back right away but it is a 24 hour process since Tmobile no longer owns the line. I would have instead spent more of my time to remove my cell phone number from all my email accounts being sure I had secondary ways of verifying my identity because you don't want to lock yourself out of your own email. Secondary ways can be another email account or your SO's cell phone number. I would have removed my cell phone from all my banking institutions right away and added secondary ways of identifying myself. Then I would triple check those accounts - some allow you to see where you are logged in from and at what times to be sure everything is legit. In Yahoo email you can sign out all accounts. Same with Gmail. Do that only if you have your secondary verification methods in place and see logins you do not recognize since you don't want to lock yourself out of your email account by accident.
Current status - it took me 24 hours to get my cell phone number ported back from Verizon. All my Chase credit cards were cancelled and new ones sent out. My Chase checking account is frozen as they investigate a Chase Quickpay that was made during this time. I had to transfer additional money into my Chase since I would have been overdrawn because of that fraudulent Quickpay but since they froze my account from any outgoing transfers I realize that really did not matter and instead I should have changed my automatic payments to the other account. And now with the account frozen I can't get the money back and Chase won't unfreeze the account.
TLDR - if are on Tmobile call 611 and add port out protection to your line to save yourself a lot of hassle.
edit - here is Tmobile's FAQ on the matter with - https://t-mo.co/secure
Submitted February 08, 2018 at 11:14AM by Amdaxiom http://ift.tt/2nUcaMT
