Illegal Number Porting

[DrewChan]

Hi folks,

I left ZA a few years back, but my elderly mother is still there. Her MTN number recently got ported by unknown people to Vodacom. With some investigation we figured it out and attempted to get the number ported back.


MTN fraud helped and claimed the number was back, but the new SIM didn't work, my mother went to an MTN store the next day (yesterday) just to be told her number is now with Cell C.

It seems there is a tug-of-war going on here between her and whoever managed to get hold of her details. Her internet banking has been frozen, but this is obviously causing her a lot of stress.

She tried phoning MTN Fraud again, but they refused to disclose why this happened and told her to buy another SIM card. My concern is that porting back again will just result in someone stealing it back to a different network.

Any suggestions? Is this a common thing happening now? It's also fascinating that the mobile network systems don't have controls in place to manage this, especially when a number is flagged as having fraudulent activity on it.

 

[cavedog]

Very common. Happened to me 3 times already but I managed to block them as I was able to reply to the messages.

You can try mtn port support to reverse the port.

Fraudsters use porting just like the sim swap to steal.

 

[airborne]

Mtn has some extra security feature that you can enable that prevents sim swaps without going through a good few hoops, I can't remember what its called but maybe that would help,

 

[Heisenborg]

Mtn has some extra security feature that you can enable that prevents sim swaps without going through a good few hoops, I can't remember what its called but maybe that would help,

Really helpful that