TheGalaxy S23 seriesdebuted earlier in the month, with Samsung and other major carriers accepting pre-orders for the phones right after the launch event. There’s still time for the phones to make their way into the hands of consumers, with pre-orders scheduled to start shipping on February 17. Now, if you are on T-Mobile’s network and placed your Galaxy S23’s pre-order through Samsung’s online store, an inadvertent bug from the Korean company’s side may have led to you losing mobile service on your existing phone.
There are multiple reports onT-Mobile’s subredditabout users suddenly losing service on their phones. Initially, many thought this was a SIM swap attack sinceT-Mobile suffered a massive data breachas recently as January 2023 that affected nearly 37 million customers on its network. As confirmed by an internal document shared byThe T-Mo Report, though, this is not the case.
Samsung accidentally activated eSIM early on a small batch of Galaxy S23 units while processing the orders causing service disruption for affected users. The bug even affected users who had SIM protection enabled.
So, if your phone suddenly lost access to T-Mobile’s network earlier in the day, there’s no need to panic. Reach out to the carrier’s customer support, and after verification, your existing SIM will be re-activated. Given how frequently data breaches happen at T-Mobile, many users might have feared that they were the target of a SIM swap attack. The bug seems to have been resolved now, so you don’t need to worry about losing network access anymore.
Do note that this bug only affected users who placed their S23 pre-orders directly through Samsung and not T-Mobile itself.
If you are concerned about being targeted with SIM swapping, check out our guide onhow to protect yourself from a SIM swap attack.
