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September 13, 2019 04:41 pm

T-Mobile Has a Secret Setting To Protect Your Account From Hackers That it Refuses To Talk About

T-Mobile has a feature that gives its customers more protection from hackers trying to steal their phone number, but you probably don't know it exists because the company doesn't advertise it publicly and won't even talk about it. From a report: It's called "NOPORT" and, in theory, it makes it a bit harder for criminals to hijack phone numbers with an attack known as "SIM swapping," a type of social engineering that is increasingly being used to steal people's phone numbers. SIM swapping attackers usually trick wireless providers into giving them control of a target's phone number by impersonating the victim with a company's customer support representatives -- usually on a phone call. T-Mobile's NOPORT feature makes this harder by requiring customers to physically come to a store and present a photo ID in order to request their number to be ported out to a different carrier or a new SIM card. In theory, this should make it impossible for someone to do a SIM swap (also known as SIM hijacking or port-out scam) over the phone. But it's unclear whether all T-Mobile customers can have NOPORT or how effective it really is. T-Mobile doesn't even inform customers that it exists. I learned about it from a tipster, and then confirmed that it is indeed real. I was able to activate the feature on my own T-Mobile account by calling customer service and asking for it to be put on the account, but the company has declined to answer specific questions about the feature.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/CokHKnakJ3s/t-mobile-has-a-secret-setting-to-protect-your-account-from-hackers-that-it-refuses-to-talk

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