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cdjohnson01's profile

Contributor

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1 Message

Friday, January 11th, 2019 4:01 PM

“temporary PIN number” from AT&T

I just received a temporary PIN number from AT&T out of the blue while at home doing nothing with my account or phone. Why or what is going on here?

Accepted Solution

Official Solution

Community Support

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230.7K Messages

5 years ago

Hello @cdjohnson01,

 

Thank you for bringing this to our attention! If you received this text, and don't remember making any efforts to receive it, then it is likely tied to fraud/scams.

If you didn't request a temporary PIN, please do not click on anything in that text message and/or do not use that PIN. This is a tactic spammers use to acquire account information.

Instead, consider changing your password to be completely safe. Here are steps on how to do so

 

Lastly, you can forward suspicious texts to 7726 (SPAM). For additional support, you can refer to our Protect yourself from phone scams page.

 

Collin, AT&T Community Specialist

(edited)

Teacher

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4 Messages

5 years ago

My wife and I have been getting these as well, and discovered it's from the AT&T mobile security app. It was prompting for a pin. We have never had this happen before. And after requesting a pin directly from the app, the pin provided still did not work so we deleted the app. That's where I believe the messages are coming from. I don't see any benefit from the app anyway. Never solved any telemarketer issues. All it ever did was notify us of new software releases for the phone. 

 

I had called AT&T about these because we had someone in Texas at a Best Buy hack our account and upgrade all of our phones, even while i was online with their fraud dept. telling them we were being hacked. So it seemed like a similar attack. She told me these messages were fraudulent. Even they don't know what's going on and they have no security to stop an attack. But that's another story. 

Contributor

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1 Message

5 years ago

It is hard to make sense out of when it is coming through on the AT&T line because you go in and ask for a real code to protect your account, that code number comes through right on the same message as that first supposed message received. So you go in and change your password but it keeps happening. Then what? If it is on your message system, where is it coming from?

Tutor

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3 Messages

5 years ago

I have gotten four messages that say they are from AT&T. They all say "Free Message: Your temporary PIN is xxxxxx"  then the PIN number is followed by series of alpha numeric text. Each time, the PIN is a different number, but the series of alpha numeric text remains the same. 

 

The "PIN number" is hot and is able to be clicked on. I have not clicked it.  The first message arrived Jan 24, 2019. The next three messages arrived over the last three days, one message a day.

 

The phone number it says it is coming from is: (746) 118-88

 

That is the real AT&T number, but the spammers are "spoofing" it and making it look like it is coming from AT&T.

 

What a pain in the butt.

Tutor

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4 Messages

5 years ago

I have been getting these texts as well. I just blocked the “number” also. Please let me know if you find anything out about these. I have been trying to look it up online.  Thanks 

Tutor

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3 Messages

5 years ago

You don't want to block the number.... they are spoofing a real AT&T number. If you block it, then you won't get any real AT&T messages.

 

At first I blocked messages from that number, but then I unblocked it after I tried to reset my PIN and didn't get the temp PIN message from AT&T.

 

That is when I realized those jack wagons were spoofing the real AT&T message number.

 

I unblocked it, requested a temp PIN again, and sure enough, the temp PIN message from AT&T came through on that number.

 

So, unblock it, unless you don't care about getting real AT&T text messages. If you didn't request a temp PIN, then just ignore any other "temp PIN" messages you get on that spoofed number. Until AT&T does something about it, we have to live with it like this. There really isn't anything they can do about it since the spammers are spoofing the AT&T message number.

Tutor

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4 Messages

5 years ago

Thank you so much. I was wondering.

Tutor

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4 Messages

5 years ago

Ok, I already deleted the texts. Don’t laugh.... how do I unblock it?

Contributor

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2 Messages

5 years ago

Thank you all. I believe it’s from the app too. I clicked on the app, and it requested a temp pin, which I was immediately sent. I’ve received about ten of these messages. I’m hoping they’ll stop now that I have confirmed with the app. 

Tutor

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3 Messages

5 years ago

Deleting the texts doesn't block further texts, that just deletes those texts.

 

If you didn't manually go and physically block all texts from that number, then you are fine and there is nothing to unblock.

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