Some TracFone customers had their phone numbers ported without permission

By Krishna Rao On Jan 27, 2022

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On November 23rd, Verizon closed on its purchase of TracFone, and customers of prepaid wireless firms such as Straight Talk, Total Wireless and Tracfone became prepaid customers of Verizon. Many were already using services provided by the nation’s largest carrier which provided wireless service to TracFone customers making the latter a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO).

According to the Wall Street Journal, around the holidays, Straight Talk customers started to complain that their mobile numbers were being disconnected and after investigating, the company has put up a notice on its website. “We were recently made aware of bad actors gaining access to a limited number of customer accounts and, in some cases, fraudulently transferring, or porting out, mobile telephone numbers to other carriers.”

The message added “These bad actors may have had access to your name, address, PIN code, account number, secret question (but not answer) and email address to the extent you provided us with such information.” TracFone told its customers that if they were contacted via text or email, they should change the PIN on their accounts immediately taking care not to reuse a previously used PIN.

Verizon closed on its purchase of TracFone this past November

TracFone also said, “If you experience a sudden loss of service, or are having difficulty with a number transfer, please contact customer service at 1-800-353-1842. If you suspect unauthorized activity regarding your wireless service, and use your mobile number as a form of authentication on other accounts (e.g., financial accounts, social media accounts), consider changing passwords to these accounts immediately.”

Some customers found that their number and service had been transferred to T-Mobile’s Metro unit without permission. T-Mobile investigated and found “no fraud or data breach of any sort,” and added that unauthorized transfers “are unfortunately an industry-wide issue.”

To combat this sort of thing, Verizon will now send TracFone customers a notification via text when it receives a request to transfer an account. This could help stop the fraudulent activities, Verizon said. The carrier also noted that the attacks are limited to 6,000 TracFone customers, a small portion of Verizon’s approximately 24 million prepaid customers.

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