Many Verizon Visible customers are reporting that they’ve had their accounts hijacked and that they’re seeing fraudulent phone purchases on their accounts. Visible is a Verizon-owned “digital” carrier that operates completely online, meaning that in-store assistance is unavailable to Visible customers.
According to XDA, users are typically reporting that their shipping address has been changed by a hacker. The bad actors then order a new iPhone 13 to be sent to the new address, which is then charged to the original account holder.
The service apparently does not use two-factor authentication to protect accounts, as many users are reporting issues with being hacked. The carrier has yet to publicly admit that there is an issue, but XDA says the carrier’s actions indicate that it is now aware of the problem.
Visible has reportedly locked out any changes to users’ billing information, or any changes of password. While this should help put an end to the fraud, it also means affected customers are now unable to change their details or to remove billing information.
We currently don’t know for sure that Visible has directly suffered a data breach. It may be possible that the bad guys are using passwords found in other data breaches. Meanwhile, some users are reporting that they have been affected in the account hijackings even though they used a randomly generated password that was used only on the Visible account.