Customers of Verizon-owned TracFone noticed their numbers transferred to completely different carriers with out their consent in latest weeks, as a part of what the corporate characterised because the work of exterior attackers, according to a notice on its web site (through the Wall Street Journal). Its Straight Talk and Total Wireless manufacturers have been affected as effectively.

“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,” TracFone mentioned within the discover. The firm didn’t reply to quite a few requests for remark from The Verge, however the WSJ reported that some 6,000 prospects have been affected. Some noticed their traces had been transferred to Metro PCS, which is owned by T-Mobile.

T-Mobile spokesperson Tara Darrow mentioned in an electronic mail to The Verge that the corporate had investigated the problem, “and there is no fraud or data breach of any sort on the T-Mobile side of these port-outs. More importantly, we do not ever possess or house the account number or PIN data that TracFone requires to validate an account and is necessary to conduct a port out of a TracFone customer, so this cannot occur from our side of the porting exercise.” She added that the corporate was working with TracFone on the problem.

Steven Simms of Atlanta has been a Total Wireless buyer for about three years. He selected the plan to save lots of a bit of cash and says he and his spouse have been completely happy prospects more often than not.

But on December thirty first, he says his cellphone quantity was ported to a different service — Metro PCS — with out his permission. “This inactivated my phone number so I cannot receive or make any calls,” Simms mentioned in an electronic mail to The Verge earlier this month. He mentioned as a small enterprise proprietor, he was dropping cash as a result of shoppers couldn’t attain him, and the corporate didn’t seem to have any treatment for him.

Simms was amongst dozens of people that advised The Verge they’d their numbers unexpectedly ported to Metro PCS starting in December. He mentioned Total Wireless customer support was unhelpful and advised him it had requested MetroPCS return his quantity, which MetroPCS advised him wasn’t correct.

Simms mentioned his quantity was lastly returned after 12 days, and he’s planning to vary suppliers however hadn’t executed in order of Wednesday.

Last September, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mentioned it was trying into strengthening guidelines to scale back cellphone scams, together with port-out fraud. This is when a fraudster poses because the proprietor of a cellphone quantity, opens an account with a special cellphone service than the sufferer’s, and has the sufferer’s cellphone quantity transferred — or “ported out” — to the brand new account with the completely different service.

It wasn’t instantly clear Wednesday who might have been behind the assault on TracFone, however the firm mentioned within the web site discover that it tried to inform prospects, “but given the nature of this activity, messages to impacted mobile telephone numbers may no longer be accessible by some customers.” TracFone urged prospects to vary their PIN numbers and mentioned it had made “enhancements” to enhance safety.

Sean Hollister contributed reporting