Comment by ktsmith

It's worse than this though. My colleague had his sim replaced by an attacker in October of last year even though his account had a note on it specifically to prevent this without the account holder being present and showing photo id. Not only can the customer service rep at your carriers store do this but so can the phone reps at all the other stores that sell phones for your carrier such as best buy. The bottom line is that SMS/phone numbers shouldn't be an identifying factor for security purposes.