Is there a recommended defense against a SIM Swap attack at the carrier level? Do carriers offer some form of two factor? I suppose the weakest link is the in store associate who just can't be bothered to verify identities.
Instructions: https://twitter.com/ramsey/status/1235227940054585344
My wife got SIM jacked just a few weeks ago and we got extremely lucky that it didn't turn into a bigger problem. They did get a hold of her Venmo account, but fortunately it's not actually linked to our bank account (Venmo restricts the # of users that can link to a single bank account).
This only protects you from the old way where a scammer tries to convince well intentioned phone support or retail employees.
Google Fi provides sim swap attack protection. To bind a Google Fi # to a phone, you need to be able to log into your Google account on that phone (from the Fi app). There is no other way to bind a Fi number to a phone (customer service doesn't even have the power to do this).
This means that whatever 2FA you have setup on your Google account is the same protection you get against sim swap attacks.
To be fair, this has not happened to me yet (with gmail) or anyone I personally know, but it remains a concern for me due to the high impact such an event could have on my life.
Is there any bulletproof way that a non-US citizen could get their account reinstated or at least recover associated accounts?
Even for US citizen's, there isn't a full-proof way to deal with account recovery. I'd say your account getting locked for incorrect reasons is pretty rare.
I think one important thing to know is that account-suspension stories you read on the internet aren't always legitimate cases. While, yes, getting publicity about an account lock can get it a second look, bad actors know this as well. Those who have done "bad" things will use this same approach to try to get their accounts unlocked. Google won't publicly comment on any individual case, so you are getting a one-sided story about why an account was locked, so be skeptical when you are reading them.
I'd love to be able to opt in to having to provide a photo id at a physical location in order to complete the SIM swap.
Or maybe the carrier can try to call or text the number for some sort of confirmation process. In our case, we never even got a warning that the swap was going to occur. We found out after my relative's email account was compromised.
This issue alone is enough to make me want to switch carriers, but AFAIK, all of them do not provide robust protection measures for this issue. I've considered Google Fi, but it might have poor coverage where some of my relatives are.