T-Mobile: Spurious Account Takeover Warning

October 23rd, 2021
phone, tech
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.

Referenced in: Giving Up On T-Mobile

Comment via: facebook, lesswrong, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Elixir's Last Dance

On May 18th, the contra dance band Elixir had their last gig ever. The dance was packed: there were three hundred people. It was the only dance BIDA has ever done where they sold tickets. People flew from across the country just to hear Elixir play one la…

via Lily Wise's Blog Posts June 5, 2025

Body Language For Trans People

When I first came out as trans, resources for trans people were full of advice about body language.

via Thing of Things June 2, 2025

Workshop House case study

Lauren Hoffman interviewed me about Workshop House and wrote this post about a community I’m working on building in DC.

via Home April 30, 2025

more     (via openring)