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It would be useful to understand the flow of an SMS from a source to a Google voice number. While you can't port a Google voice number, it seems like if you can intercept an SMS from a source before it gets to Google then this technique will work.

A useful strategy to help against this in any case is to use a different email address for every online service. Hackers generally can't initiate an account password reset if they don't know the account.

Also if you use a different phone number for account security than your public one then it's a lot harder for them to know what SMS to intercept. Security by obscurity sucks but in this world it may be your only practical choice.




> While you can't port a Google voice number

You absolutely can port a Google Voice number. End-user subscriber numbers must be portable per FCC rules. Google, operating services provided by Bandwidth.com (mentioned in the article), does enable port-protection by default but this is easy to bypass by an operator who, like in the article, checks the box that says something like "I have a valid written LOA, complete the port as an exception." This has legitimate uses (some losing providers are very ruthless about not following the rules and letting customers move numbers) but unscrupulous or lazy operators will check the box and move on.




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