> How is someone persuading your provider to transfer your number to another provider, a hack? It sounds like you are not aware of the existence of the term “S

> How is someone persuading your provider to transfer your number to another provider, a hack? It sounds like you are not aware of the existence of the term “Social Engineering”. I invite you to read this Wiki page [1] which explains what the hack is about. Social Engineering is, in fact, one of the most common techniques used by hack people, for example, by tricking someone into clicking a malicious link in a phishing email. There is also “Smishing” which is the same —tricking someone into reading and clicking a malicious text or link— but via SMS. In this specific case the hackers are using a technique commonly known as “Vishing” or “Voice Phishing” [2] which is a criminal practice of using social engineering over a telephone system to gain access to private personal and financial information from the public for the purpose of financial reward (verbatim from WikiPedia). Have you heard stories of hacks where an employee plugged an infected USB, CD-ROM or floppy-disk into a computer connected to a secure facility? Well, this is another social engineering technique commonly known as “Baiting” used by hackers to attack systems that otherwise would be impossible to access from outside [3]. Stuxnet [4] is one of the most famous examples of a social engineering attack, among several other techniques. As you can see, social engineering is the very beginning of many hacks. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_%28security%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_%28security... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_phishing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_phishing [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_gap_%28networking%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_gap_%28networking%29 [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet