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Reader Richard says he came home this summer to angry parents "because of our sprint bill with the family share plan was insanely high." Of course, it turned out to be the same typo we'd written about before, but we really enjoyed the polite but firm manner in which Sprint asked Richard's parents for $39,952... "today."
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Jessie opened his Sprint bill and nearly had a heart attack. Staring back at him was in big bold letters: COLLECTION AGENCY ALERT. After recovering, Jessie looked at his bill and nearly had a second heart attack. It said the amount due was $32,669.00. Huh? Had his cellphone been hacked? Used as a call-home payphone for a neighborhood of Tajikistan émigrés? Used by NASA as a Space Station communications channel? Take a guess and then see the answer inside...
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sprint
Interesting, completely unverified, tidbit from an anonymous Sprint employee: "We're no longer allowed to quote the customer in our notes [on the account] because if they're subpoenaed by a judge then they'll be evidence proving they're telling the truth regarding their situation." Any Sprint insiders care to comment?
(Photo: Maulleigh)
This is Round 28 in our Worst Company in America contest, Sprint vs Hewlett Packard. Vote which sucks more, inside...
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happy endings
stupid
followups
Two more instances of Sprint's insecure online system:
1) Members of the Howards Forums cellphone message boards have discovered a URL hack that lets users add the "Unlimited Shared Night & Weekend Minutes at 5pm pack" for free to their account.
2) If you take this URL and replace the phone# at the end with the phone number of someone who hasn't set up the PIN on their account, you will see the last 4 digits of their social security number. Not a huge deal, we give out the last 4 of our social over the phone all the time, but it seems a bit odd to broadcast these numbers unnecessarily.
PREVIOUSLY: Flawed Sprint Security Worse Than We Thought
Flawed Security Lets Sprint Accounts Get Easily Hijacked
Reader Pam asked Jessica if she could port her landline to her mobile account, prompting the Sprint CSR to respond: "No, are you nucking futz?" Pam wasn't expecting an abusive chat when she visited Sprint's website to research a potential contract extension, but Jessica unexpectedly appeared with advice that wasn't just rude, but also wrong.
UPDATE: Sprint's "Nucking Futs" "Jessica" Fired
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tragic
In the comments on our post exposing a flaw in Sprint's online account security that would let a stranger completely take control of your cellphone account, a former Sprint rep says it's even weaker than what we thought. How? Reader Dragonfire81 says that every question about cars has three luxury models and one typical car, making it pretty easy to guess. "None of the above" for "which properties have you owned" was correct 99% of the time. And worst of all, you only need to answer two of the questions correctly to gain access to an account. "I was shocked at the number of times I was able to access an account by simply guessing the answers," he writes. "Fortunately I am an ethical person, but if I wasn't I could've done a LOT of damage very easily." Here's his comment in full:
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We found you can hijack a Sprint user's account as long as you know their cellphone number, just a smidge about them, and have half a brain. Once inside, you have total access to their account. You could change their billing address, order a whole bunch of cellphones sent to a drop location, and leave the victim paying the bill. There's also the stalker's wet dream: add GPS tracking to their cellphone and secretly watch their every movement from any computer. Reader Jim told Sprint about this 2 months ago but they ignored him, so I tested it out and am publishing the results in the hope of getting Sprint to fix this exploit. I'll show you we cracked into a Sprint account and just how much damage I could have done, inside...
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1:17 PM on Tue Apr 8 2008
By Ben Popken
35,713 views,
70 comments
Latest by cdmarulz: Sprint is not the only company using the security process like the above. I called into fidelity investments and said I forgot my pin and the same questions were asked to confim my identity. Cells phones are one thing investment more »
complaints
Someone hacked this couple's Sprint account, and bought four new phones on it, leaving these 12-year customers to pay over $2,500. Every time they called Sprint, the fraud department said not to worry and that the charges would be off the bill next month, but the disconnect notices kept arriving until Sprint shut off their phone. Only after a local consumer reporter got involved was the problem solved. When asked why it took so long, Sprint said, "it takes a while to complete a thorough investigation." If you're a legacy Nextel customer now with Sprint, you may want to ask about getting a PIN set up on your account. The account seemed to have been targeted (the fraud department said probably by someone inside Sprint) because it was an old Nextel account that didn't have a PIN.
Sprint charges customer $2,500 [Journal Inquirer] (Thanks to Brian!)
insiders
BG's Sprint plan lets him talk for 1,000,499 minutes per month and only costs $50. How did he find this stupefyingly amazing plan? Hit the jump for his story.
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sprint
success stories
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