'She did the right thing': Waukesha County woman narrowly avoids phone fraud -- now she's warning others

WAUKESHA COUNTY, Wis. (CBS 58) -- a Waukesha County woman is spreading awareness after almost becoming a victim of fraud. It's a scam that cellphone carriers say has been happening for years. Instead of stealing phones, these thieves are stealing phone numbers.

The Federal Communications Commission calls it "port-out fraud," a scam to hijack your cell phone number by porting - or moving - it from your phone provider to another.

"It never occurred to me that someone would try to steal my phone number," said Carrie, who did not want to share her last name, out of caution.

Carrie received a text from Verizon on Monday that said a "port request" was in process.

"I didn't really think that it was a big deal, because you get scam texts all the time," she said.

A few minutes later, she got another text - this time from AT&T.

"That said there was a problem with my port request, and that the PIN number didn't match the PIN that my carrier would have given them," Carrie explained.

Carrie reached out to her provider, and they confirmed there was a request to port her phone number to AT&T - a request that she did not make.

"It's really a fraudster that's trying to get a hold of your phone number, that way they can use it in different ways to access accounts across the internet," explained Jeff Kew, a technology expert at Verizon Wireless.

Kew said scammers do this to get into banking and social media apps using two factor authentication.

"We're not going to contact you out of the blue with a text message asking for information," he said.

Verizon has a free service called "Number Lock" that prevents unauthorized porting, and Carrie turned it on right away.

"They're like, perfect, that's exactly what you need you to do, we've canceled the request on our end," she said.

Thankfully, Carrie's information was kept safe, and now she is changing all of her passwords.

"I have all secure accounts, and I'm moving everything to an authenticator app, which is different from using my phone number," she said.

"She did the right thing," Kew said.

Carrie has been telling friends and family to make sure their number lock is turned on, because it is usually turned off by default.

Kew said cell phone providers do have multiple security teams monitoring scams like this.

Anyone who has had a similar experience is encouraged to file a complaint through the FCC.

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