Is it possible to hack someone's phone account and cut off their access to their own phone?

It can be done to some extent, for a limited time, depending on how much access the hacker has to what devices and information, and on how long it takes the victim to notice and to respond effectively.

If they have possession of a phone belonging to someone who has two phones, and if they can open that phone and/or get access to enough information about that person and their accounts, then they may be able to log in to the phone company web site and/or call the phone company and impersonate the owner, and report it stolen and get it blocked.

What kinds of blocking are possible may depend on the model of the victim’s remaining phone, and its settings.

But as soon as the owner contacts their phone company and identifies themself, the company may end up believing them and unblocking the phone and blocking the stolen phone instead.

” how long it takes the victim to notice and to respond effectively.” Can Textnow service authenitcate the real owner and restore the phone? It’s not a regular phone company.

This is urgent.

It probably depends on what unique info Textnow knows about the victim, and whether the hacker has the same information or not.

If you or someone you know are the victim, I would try to get their tech support in a phone conversation about it as soon as you can.

Thank you. Yes, somebody I know is (or thinks so) and it is true that stuff has been locked or blocked on their phone.

Also could that same clever person use the #2 phone to physically locate sombody

With real phones and a normal phone company, they might be able to locate the other phone if they are impersonating the owner and tell the company the phone is lost or stolen and they need to locate the other phone.

Or, if the phones were already set up for tracking, it could be possible without getting the phone company involved.

What sort of phone is it?

BTW, I’m not sure TextNow takes phone calls from customers. But they have tech support chat at https://www.textnow.com/account/new#support

thanks very much for your help @Zaku. So then could the real owner also get Textnow to locate the stolen phone??

What kind of phone, I don’t know. Thanks for the contact and I will pass it along quickly.

Anybody else that can add anything?

I am just learning about TextNow tonight. I’d not heard of it before. It looks like it’s just a virtual phone service for texting from an app. So I don’t think TextNow will have access to other features of the actual phone.

It would help to know more about the actual situation with the phones and TextNow. Do you actually have two actual smartphones which are on the same actual account? Or is it like you have one phone and are running TextNow on it to text with a different phone number, and someone else has their own actual phone, but knows you use TextNow and may have your TextNow password and may be using your TextNow account from their own phone?

one person has two actual smartphones. One is missing. They both make phone calls and send media etc through Textnow services beyond just text. The victim person has been cut off from using their own phone.

Ok, so TextNow is the only phone company involved, and they’re both on the same TextNow account?

What brands are the phones?

1. I think so. 2.I don’t know. Let me see if I can find out more. Thank you @Zaku.

Sure. Hopefully they get in touch with TextNow as soon as they can, and TextNow can help.

If they have an Android phone of some type, and log on to it with Google, they may be able to locate their Android phones associated with that account, by going to https://www.google.com/android/find . If the “clever” hacker knows about this, and knows their Google account login information, then they could do this too. (Unless the Find My Device service is turned off.)

Other options with the Android Find service include making the phone ring, locking the phone, and erasing all data from the phone (after which it can’t be located that way).

Sure. But they’d probably have to have physical access to your phone.