The act of tricking a phone company into giving us someone else’s mobile number is called “SIM-swapping”. It’s surprisingly easy and common.

Most phone companies will give control of our mobile numbers to anyone, so long as that person knows enough about us.

For this reason, we need to assume any codes sent by text can be stolen by crooks.

This also applies to apps which use our phone numbers to let us log in. If someone SIM-swaps us, those accounts could be gone forever.