Scammers can hijack your phone number. Here's what to do

Consumers are being warned about a growing scam that doesn't target bank account numbers or credit cards. Instead, criminals are after something many people use every day: their cellphone number. According to the Federal Communications Commission, scammers can hijack your phone number and use it to gain access to financial, email and social media accounts.While this isn't one of the most common scams out there, it can have an outsized impact on victims. The FBI received 982 reports in 2024, but losses approached $26 million, according to data cited by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund.How the scam worksThe scam is often known as a "port-out" fraud. The FCC says scammers typically gather personal information from social media, data breaches and other sources before contacting a victim's wireless carrier and pretending to be the account holder. Then they attempt to transfer the victim's phone number to a device or account they control.Once the transfer is completed, victims may suddenly lose