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Comment by fortran77 | Hacker News Reader

He's got good evidence. The SIM-swappers have actually been convicted. ATT says it's "an industry" problem, but it's 100% their problem. They are doing nothing to stop employees from robbing their customers.

Of course the victim could probably have protected his "life savings" better, but that's not the point.

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AT&T's going to say "you don't own that phone number--it's ours--and we never said it was intended for verifying your identity. Take it up with whoever stole your number and your--wait, someone stole your cryptocurrency? You realize banks are insured against mistakes like this and bitcoin wallets aren't, right?"

Losing your life’s savings in an irrevocable way is a feature of crypto currency. Not a bug!

Except AT&T themselves use the phone number as a form of identity verification / 2nd factor so that argument doesn't really hold up.

Also insurance doesn't always hold up in cases like this, especially if the company was aware of the weakness and chose to do nothing about it.

Well, most companies, AT&T including, do not have truly irreversible actions. If someone steals your account this way, with enough complaining you will likely get it back, mostly, eventually. Same thing with traditional banking.

This breaks down for internet giants which provide free services which can still be very valuable, like gmail, and that’s why they are moving away from it.

Their employees and their systems.

Ideally it wouldn't be possible for a single employee to do this.

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