This morning, reading in bed, I got a very worrying notification:
This is the notification you would receive if someone was in the
process of taking control of your phone number, which could then give
them access to other accounts where you had used that phone number as
a backup or for two-factor authentication. So I was very concerned!
In case this was a different sort of scam, however, I wasn’t about to
call the phone number (which could be anyone) but I visited the
website and talked to someone over chat. They confirmed that my pin
had been changed, but also said that since I have a prepaid account
they couldn’t tell me more than that. They told me to call T-Mobile
customer support at 611.
When I called 611, they looked into it, and said that this was an
automatic message sent as part of migrating my account to a new
billing system. They confirmed no one had reset my pin other than
their automated system.
I’m disappointed in T-Mobile for either not realizing their migration
would trigger this message, or deciding to go ahead with it despite
the user impact.
T-Mobile: Spurious Account Takeover Warning
Link post
This morning, reading in bed, I got a very worrying notification:
This is the notification you would receive if someone was in the process of taking control of your phone number, which could then give them access to other accounts where you had used that phone number as a backup or for two-factor authentication. So I was very concerned!
In case this was a different sort of scam, however, I wasn’t about to call the phone number (which could be anyone) but I visited the website and talked to someone over chat. They confirmed that my pin had been changed, but also said that since I have a prepaid account they couldn’t tell me more than that. They told me to call T-Mobile customer support at 611.
When I called 611, they looked into it, and said that this was an automatic message sent as part of migrating my account to a new billing system. They confirmed no one had reset my pin other than their automated system.
I’m disappointed in T-Mobile for either not realizing their migration would trigger this message, or deciding to go ahead with it despite the user impact.