Quote:
Originally Posted by Greg Anos
Turn off your call forwarding on your landline! Your number can be hacked, and forwarded to another smart phone number. Voila! Your landline is now a smart phone, under a hacker's control. And then they can steal from any account that has your land line as the only number.
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This seems very unlikely to me. Can you please elaborate on how my landline number might be "hacked"? Without hacking my landline provider's system, just how would they change where my number is being forwarded to? And how would turning off call forwarding on my landline prevent someone who later hacks my landline account (or my landline provider's system) from re-enabling call-forwarding and doing whatever they want anyway? And what kind of accounts are vulnerable to being "stolen from" with just a phone number? Even to get the second token of a 2FA protected account forwarded to someone's smart phone from a hacked landline, they'd need to crack the first password.
I'm all for being safer with your data, but your scenario doesn't sound that probable to me. I just don't believe anyone is more (or less) at risk by having their landline forwarded.
You're better off realizing (and spreading the word) that companies such as Apple and Microsoft simply don't cold-call people to avoid this kind of scam.