Thousands of customers may have been affected.
“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 said in the notice. The company did not reply to numerous requests for comment fromreported that some 6,000 customers were affected. Some saw their lines had been transferred to Metro PCS, which is owned by T-Mobile.
Steven Simms of Atlanta has been a Total Wireless customer for about three years. He chose the plan to save a bit of money and says he and his wife were happy customers most of the time. But on December 31st, he says his phone number was ported to another carrier — Metro PCS — without his permission. “This inactivated my phone number so I cannot receive or make any calls,” Simms said in an email toearlier this month. He said as a small business owner, he was losing money because clients couldn’t reach him, and the company didn’t appear to have any remedy for him.they had their numbers unexpectedly ported to Metro PCS beginning in December.
Simms said his number was finally returned after 12 days, and he’s planning to change providers but hadn’t done so as of Wednesday.