Suspended service confusion

Sorry for this incredible delay!

I so appreciate your personal response to  my dilemma with my special needs son and his phone line.  It is a shame that the phone service can not be completely shut off.. including use of wifi....it still seems to defeat the purpose of protecting him from others and his own innocence and trusting nature. In this day of super tech, why can't this  be done? 

I know, take his phone away!!  Well that is definitely not safe to take away his only means of communication  from a 300 lb 26 year old special needs guy!  Ouch! 

But thanks for listening and again for the response!

Suspension only shuts down the SIM card.   If you want to shut off wifi, turn off wifi at the source, Your router.  Some routers have the ability to set time limits.

That is a great solution, I wish I had known months ago and was told that when I called with my concerns during the episode. But a mom (me) doesn't always have access to their 26 years old son's phone especially when strangers are harassing him...he may be embarrassed, confused or accepting their comments as the truth.  In other words, passwords are deemed private and hard to come by.  Never a dull moment. Thanks for your comment!! Very kind!!

Good afternoon. I got here to this subject on the forum after something suspicious this morning that happened on my Mom's phone who is the primary account holder for all in our family plan. But after reading this it's clear to see there is confusion on a whole list of other issues, the first of which I see concerning the harassment calls. Before I start on my subject, there are some things that you need to know about WiFi calling services. There are app's out there that wll allow you to use WiFi even if your phone number is suspended that have their own phone numbers, and can hide the real number it's coming from. Texting, calling, and multimedia services are a part of the app's service making it appear as if it's a fully active cellular phone number. Call Burner is one, Line 2 is another. Call Burner in particular will generate a number for your local area, and allows caller ID functions allowing you to use your profile to give a name to a caller's ID. Skype is still used for WiFi calling but it doesn't allow for independent SMS/Text message services to give a number like Call Burner and Line 2 will. I've learned that fraudulent scam calls, texts, or multimedia messages can be created from these app's and some criminals will hide their identities that same way. Some even allow for 800 number setup such as Skype, and there may be ways for similar from certain calling card companies. To the person with the disabled son receiving harassment calls and texts, notify law enforcement and allow them to dig deeper. And that leads me to this report here confirmed from this morning's issue. 

At 11:10 AM CDT an automated phone call that identified as "AT&T Customer Care" on the caller ID for my Mom's phone from phone number 1-800-331-0500 was received. My Mom answered the phone call and heard a computer automated voice. The voice said "Your cellular phone service has been suspended. Please press 1 to reactivate your service". Not thinking she pressed 1, and was connected immediately with someone saying her name was Rand, and that she needed the phone number, name on the account, and passcode. Hearing this I interrupted my Mom and had her hang up immediately. She did without giving the information and we went through the checklist to first confirm that her account had been suspended. We made 2 calls, were able to get on the Internet, sent 2 text messages and the service was till on. It hadn't been suspended. So we called AT&T using 611. We were connected with an agent who's name was Al, He checked the account and confirmed that AT&T DID NOT call her, and that her account was in good standing with no issues of any kind. He escalated this to Security and Fraud and asked us to report it here. I went to the main page but it only offers reporting of text, or e-mail fraud. This is a new tactic and there needs to be a way to report new run-in's with this one. If this is going on people are going to fall for it with the caller ID showing AT&T customer care. And it's possible this may be a number that morphs. 

If there's any way to do this please put it somewhere that users and customer's can easily access the reporting section because this may get out of hand. 

I've got a serious problem with these kinds of scams and fraud. Please help me put these people down. 

@thunderofok The scam call you are reporting is not new and has been reported multiple times in the past but thanks for sharing. Just FYI, ATT will never make such a call.

Why don’t u just change his number ? 

Why don’t you just change his number ? 

@Amollison1  You responded twice to a 5-year old thread. I don't think the OP has posted back since 2018.