A growing problem most customers don't know about
Lorrie Cranor had her phone number hijacked a few weeks ago, though she didn't realize what was happening at the time. It just seemed like some sort of glitch caused her smartphone and her husband's to both go dead on the same day.
When she called her carrier, the customer service representative wanted to know if the problem was with her new iPhone. Cranor didn't have a new iPhone.
"We found out that someone had gone into the phone store in another city with a fake ID and said they wanted to upgrade their phones," Cranor said. "They walked out with two brand new iPhones with our phone numbers on them and charged to our account."
Cranor, who happens to be the chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), decided to investigate the crime and recently wrote a detailed warning about it.
"We've been getting complaints about this for several years, but the number and frequency of the complaints is definitely going up recently," Cranor told NBC News.