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Rogers is an abysmally bad company in terms of market near-monpolization and customer service, BUT, from the point of view of someone in telecom: There is a no

Rogers is an abysmally bad company in terms of market near-monpolization and customer service, BUT, from the point of view of someone in telecom: There is a non zero risk of unauthorized 3rd parties making service changes or cancellations to somebody's account, so it's standard procedure to have a customer service rep ask some basic security questions of the account holder before proceeding with a port, change or cancellation. You don't want just any random person who stole your login/password to the rogers portal to be able to port your cellphone number away, right? There's a valid reason why a few barriers should be introduced to cancelling someone's service or making significant service changes, before the company can be totally satisfied that it really is the authorized account holder making the change. You get security problems like people trying to port away someone's number to receive SMS for "SMS 2FA" (which is not really 2FA at all, that's a whole other shitshow) to hijack cryptocurrency trading accounts or similar. Or any other service that can have its credentials reset by sending an SMS to the "authorized" phone number. In addition to the risk of fraud for things like porting numbers away, there's things like disgruntled ex-girlfriends/ex-boyfriends trying to cancel peoples' services. All of that said, it is also a sad fact that C-level execs at big consumer-abusive canadian telecoms consider it totally fine to introduce whatever arbitrary barriers they can to reduce the level of customer churn. There is the factor that a great many Rogers customers have been tricked at the start of their service into signing up for 12, 24 or 36 month term contracts, so arbitrarily cancelling service can have financial implications for the customer if they didn't look in detail at what they signed up for when they started the service. Even with BYOD device plans, the 3rd party Rogers resellers in Canada such as Glentel get a buttload more commission from locking people into 24 month contract terms, so they do that as the default now unless you look carefully at what you're signing.

saxonww 4y ago
Do you believe that's what this requirement is for? This has not been my experience, although I have never dealt with Rogers. Whenever I have canceled service from a similar vendor in this market, they want me to talk to a representative to try and encourage me to stay, not to make sure I am who I say I am. I am not sure how they would determine authenticity over the phone any better than they could electronically, although I know there are 'voice print' authentication services now that maybe they use. Overall, when I see this I believe it's to introduce enough friction that some people will give up without trying.
- walrus01 4y ago
  I believe it's a combination of both. The authentication questions are often something quite basic that an account hijacker might not be in possession of, unless they bought basically a full identity theft kit/data set from some data dump. Like residential address, date of birth, last four digits of the credit card or current billing method, etc.
KennyBlanken 4y ago
> There is a non zero risk of unauthorized 3rd parties making service changes or cancellations to somebody's account, so it's standard procedure to have a customer service rep ask some basic security questions of the account holder before proceeding with a port, change or cancellation. This isn't really true. It's very easy to get a replacement SIM sent or a number ported and is primarily how a lot of financial and online accounts are compromised. Some carriers allow for specifying a SIM and porting lock on the account with an additional password, or requiring an in-person visit to a physical store with ID.
- walrus01 4y ago
  I didn't say it's hard to do, any moderately competent social engineer can bluster the phone customer service reps into porting away someone's account, it absolutely happens all the time.

saxonww 4y ago

Do you believe that's what this requirement is for? This has not been my experience, although I have never dealt with Rogers. Whenever I have canceled service from a similar vendor in this market, they want me to talk to a representative to try and encourage me to stay, not to make sure I am who I say I am. I am not sure how they would determine authenticity over the phone any better than they could electronically, although I know there are 'voice print' authentication services now that maybe they use. Overall, when I see this I believe it's to introduce enough friction that some people will give up without trying.

walrus01 4y ago
I believe it's a combination of both. The authentication questions are often something quite basic that an account hijacker might not be in possession of, unless they bought basically a full identity theft kit/data set from some data dump. Like residential address, date of birth, last four digits of the credit card or current billing method, etc.

KennyBlanken 4y ago

> There is a non zero risk of unauthorized 3rd parties making service changes or cancellations to somebody's account, so it's standard procedure to have a customer service rep ask some basic security questions of the account holder before proceeding with a port, change or cancellation. This isn't really true. It's very easy to get a replacement SIM sent or a number ported and is primarily how a lot of financial and online accounts are compromised. Some carriers allow for specifying a SIM and porting lock on the account with an additional password, or requiring an in-person visit to a physical store with ID.

walrus01 4y ago
I didn't say it's hard to do, any moderately competent social engineer can bluster the phone customer service reps into porting away someone's account, it absolutely happens all the time.