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Comment by amag | Hacker News Reader

In the process of transferring a phone number now and it seems to be universally insecure. Sign a paper and you're done.

A simple automated SMS from your current provider that requires a "YES" response would be a lot securer and shouldn't be hard to implement.

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I used to keep putting my phones through the washing machine, so I stuck with cheap prepaids until I got over the habit. This happened several times:

Me: Hi, my phone number is X. I put my phone in the wash, please transfer my number and minutes to this new phone.

Telco: Ok what was your old serial number?

Me: I don't know, my old phone went through the wash.

Telco: Um...ok you're all set.

Don't forget number porting is recently new. The FCC started requiring carriers do it in 2003. Since the telco's were forced to do it, you think they are going to put any effort into it unless legally required to do so? They don't care.

Nearly every carrier has a customer provided pin attached to the customer account that is used to verify porting requests.

Stop commenting on things you know nothing about.

Almost all US prepaid providers use the last 4 digits of the phone number or the billing zip code as the PIN.

Many landline and voip providers really do just require a signature.

Landline & VOIP providers rarely have a PIN or security question on file, and CLECs like Level 3 (who supplies Twilio and many others) will approve nearly any port since their customers don't keep customer service records for each number on file with them.

There has literally been hundreds of cases reported in the media in the last few years where the phone company ported a phone number either without verification or with "verification" (easily found information) and the victim had their accounts stolen. This has been a documented problem.

Phone companies seem to be starting to take the issue more seriously as of the last few months due to the aforementioned bad press. Verizon just forced me to create a PIN by Jan 24th, 2017. So I didn't have a PIN until less than a month ago.

The practice has been in place so long, even a lumbering giant like Verizon requires it... Hahaha

I moved off verizon to google fi last summer, there was no PIN, just asked for my phone number and name.

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