Wait, those headsets have yet to go the way of Google Glass?!
They canât stop now, itâs bat country!
So I recently had to get a new cell phone number. It was a pretty smooth transition, except that I had a couple of older accounts with financial institutions who could only validate my identity by sending a two-factor authentication code to my old number, which I no longer have access toâŚ
I managed to work out the issue with Paypal, and was ultimately able to get into my account and change their method of authentication to things other than a text to my cellphone, but in order for Bank of America to trust me, I will need to go to one of their branch offices with physical identification.
You might want to check all of your banking accounts and make sure that youâre not solely relying on your telephone number to be your only method of ID.
You should avoid it like the plague, as cell porting is one of the easiest social engineering attacks to pull off. Even TOTP is 10 times better, although there are loads of much more secure 2nd factors.
Good advice. I wish Iâd changed it before I ditched my old number. Now, all of them are more secure. Thanks!
Doesnât roll off the tongue with the bâŚ
[The largest password leak in history exposes nearly 10 billion credentials (msn.com)]
[Hackers leak nearly 10 billion credentials in largest leak in history - The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com)]
Passwords alone are useless, you need a second (and maybe third if itâs especially sensitive) âfactorâ. The second factors can be biometric (face recognition, fingerprint), numeric (TOTP is a 6 digit code thatâs valid for 30 seconds, IIRC), or a physical device, which has to be connected to the computer to be touched or interacted with, and provide a password (there are other methods).
