Charge to Mobile Fraud

[Oversizedpotato]

Hi,

I saw few people had the same issue but in short, my phone was stolen - they took out my sim card, put it in their device and before I managed to get a new sim, they spent around £400 using the 'Charge to Mobile' feature. They set up their own Google account, linking it to my O2 Pay Monthly account.

O2 cannot help me with this and Google Play say that since these haven't gone out of my own Gmail, there's nothing they can do either. I reported my phone stolen to the police and told O2.

I had to suggest myself to put a bar on the 'Charge to Mobile' feature to stop these payments from going out.

Did anyone solve this issue successfully? I am converting my sim into an e-sim to prevent this from happening again.

Also, how is this even possible? Is all they need a phone number and one verification code to set this up? Not even the name of the account owner? No other layer of authentication or protection? Shocking.

Many thanks!

[Cleoriff]

@Oversizedpotato 

You can ask O2  to put a bar on Charge to mobile

Also change your spend cap to 0

Guide: Spend Caps & Charge to Mobile on O2 

Also ring the fraud number 0800 052 9455

[MI5]

@Oversizedpotato 

You could have prevented this by using a sim pin.

Guide: How to set up a SIM pin on O2 

[Oversizedpotato]

Yes, I did that. Thanks!
My spend cap was 0. Though, that didn't help at all.

[Oversizedpotato]

Hi,

I appreciate this and am converting to an esim. I am looking for a solution at the moment as I've gone through the what ifs already.

Thanks!