With the new number porting to authenticate with your financial institution to steal your money by fraudsters everyone is pointing fingers at the phone providers when you should be looking at the security your financial institution is providing.
These fraudsters are not porting your number because they want the number, they are doing it in order to steal your money because your financial institution if relying on your cellphone provider for security, it’s not the phone providers job to secure your finances.
Fraudsters have no rules or laws to obey, the phone providers, on the other hand, have rules and laws to abide by. Once a phone provider gets a request by another provider to port a number and once the info is correct which the fraudsters already got from the financial institution account that they already compromise but just need to authenticate, the phone provider has no choice but to port the number you can read more about such rules here specifically section 27, here and here.
Instead of blaming your phone provider you should be getting your financial intuition to provide better security, If your financial institution implements something like the Google Titan Security Key this would be a much safer way to authenticate your financial accounts.
Everyone wants convenience and even a security key might not be as convenient for some simply because you will need to have that key handy.
Hello @Nancy20,
The problem does not start with the phone number, the fraudsters do not pick a random number to port then go after your money they already have enough of your info and porting the number is the last step to authenticate your finances and take your money.
For the last 15+ years, we have the ability to port our number and the way it is done was never a problem because like I said before no one wants your number. What has changed is people rely on their cell number for 2-factor authentication simply for convenience. Even Kevin Mitnick said two-factor authentication can be vulnerable, you can see that here.
It's simple if you don't want your number ported and your money stolen do not rely on your phone number as security. Your phone provider is in the telecom business, not security the burden of securing all our other accounts should not be put on the phone carriers.
Phone providers have to operate within the standards the CRTC set they can't just do whatever they want.
If you want changes you need to reach out to the CRTC. I'm sure they will eventually come up with new standards to protect against SIM-Swap but that will come at a cost, it will be the consumer that will have to pay for that.
If you really want to protect your finances you should be reaching out to your financial institution to see what they are doing to better secure your money.
Hey @nickgx,
We take our role of protecting our customers’ personal information very seriously. As fraudsters use evolving techniques to try to take advantage of wireless consumers, we continually strengthen processes to prevent unauthorized porting.
Whenever a port out is requested, you'll receive an notification SMS right away for security purposes. If you've requested the port out, you'll need to authorize it within 90 minutes, If not, after 90 minutes, the request will expire and no changes will be made.
Hope this helps!
*Updated on 2021-08-28
Hey @Ann8554,
When a port-out is requested you will receive an SMS with the alert right away. There is nothing to set up or to request on your end.
I hope that clarifies things! 🙂
