Hackers Stole My Phone Number – A Personal Story

On March 3rd, at approximately 9pm, hackers stole my phone number. I didn’t become aware of this until a little more than 24 hours later, but hacking attempts on my other accounts began right away. Prior to this nightmarish experience, I had never heard of this happening to anyone else; however, in the days that followed I quickly became aware of its rapidly growing popularity and frightening ease of execution. Pulling off this attack requires virtually no technical skills, rather it relies entirely on social engineering, persistence, and an incompetent telecom employee. If this can happen to me, it can happen to virtually anybody.

The 48 hour period beginning at around 5am on March 4th was one of the most trying, confusing and frightening of my life. At that point, my wife and I had been up pretty much all night due to our son being in the midst of a horrible sleep regression. In fact, his crying was so hysterical I ended up calling our pediatrician’s office to ensure he wasn’t suffering from something more serious. I was going on two hours of sleep, the sun was about to rise and I was dealing with an inconsolable child. I thought things couldn’t get much worse. Boy was I wrong.

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