how safe is your phone when you give out your pin

**didgit** · 11-10-2011, 01:40 AM

is giving your pin out a safe thing to do ? i have friends i trust that have it but what about other people you may not know in person, how safe is it for others to have your pin ?

**JR A** · 11-10-2011, 02:04 AM

Very safe. It's not like they can get any other information out of it.

**Tõnis** · 11-10-2011, 07:03 AM

Yes, I think the PIN system is the best. It's tied to your phone. The other day someone was asking how to recover a forgotten @carrier.blackberry.net email address password. One option my carrier gives is to enter your PIN on its BIS website, and it will send the password directly to you. (I imagine it's a PIN message.) If you do this, you can be sure it won't go to any other phone.

**_StephenBB81** · 11-10-2011, 07:18 AM

Far more secure than using a Phone number (PingMe, iMessage*) as their is zero personal info tied to your PIN unless you put it there. and you change phones, the PIN is gone, you get to start fresh, but with a device switch none of your contacts need to know, so you can delete who you don`t want, device switch, they can`t get you back. no email addresses to change, or user accounts to worry about, it is simplistically beautiful

*iMessage can use more than just phone numbers to ad a user

**mark-d** · 11-10-2011, 07:22 AM

I'd say it's pretty safe as it's tied solely to your phone but unlike the phone number if you give out your PIN and someone adds you in BBM you can easily just delete them and block their PIN from making a re-add request.

**ichat** · 11-10-2011, 08:11 AM

Its the safest thing out there. The only way someone can suck a bit of info is if you add them to BBM

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

P.S. Were you relating this to me? Lolz

**mohawk apple** · 11-10-2011, 08:31 AM

Originally Posted by ichat

Its the safest thing out there. The only way someone can suck a bit of info is if you add them to BBM

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

P.S. Were you relating this to me? Lolz

This is what I'm wondering, can they get any kind of info of mine if I add them to bbm? How much info can they get? Thanks

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

**didgit** · 11-10-2011, 08:35 AM

Originally Posted by ichat

Its the safest thing out there. The only way someone can suck a bit of info is if you add them to BBM

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

P.S. Were you relating this to me? Lolz

...well you know with all the hacking going off in the news you have to know what you are upto! , ignorance is not the answer ....

**melh72** · 11-10-2011, 08:40 AM

As already stated they can't get any info about you except what you add to your BBM. For example your BBM updates and if you add your location.

If you're curious about what they would see add yourself to BBM and view your own profile. What you're able to see is what anyone else would see...

Originally Posted by mohawk rcer

This is what I'm wondering, can they get any kind of info of mine if I add them to bbm? How much info can they get? Thanks

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

**ichat** · 11-10-2011, 09:10 AM

Even if someone adds you on BBM, not much would be leaked. BBM and PIN system is the SAFEST out there!

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

**Danf** · 11-10-2011, 09:22 AM

IS IT SAFE????

**Tõnis** · 11-10-2011, 09:37 AM

The only negative consequence I can think of as far as posting my PIN goes might be the possibility of receiving PIN message spam. But I'm not sure how likely/prevalent that is. Could someone please pass along his experience as far as that is concerned?

**GingerSnapsBack** · 11-10-2011, 01:18 PM

Originally Posted by Tõnis

The only negative consequence I can think of as far as posting my PIN goes might be the possibility of receiving PIN message spam. But I'm not sure how likely/prevalent that is. Could someone please pass along his experience as far as that is concerned?

I'm not a him, but I'll share.

I've added people and had people, especially from Iraq and India, just add random numbers together until they get a live person. I block them and they keep coming back using different PINs. The worst kind of spam I keep getting are broadcast messages which I HATE and the person who sends it out gets deleted. Most of the time, it's those stupid chain mail things about how RIM will delete you off the face of the earth and a giant velociraptor will fly through your house and crap in your living room if you don't forward this to all your friends.

Lot of weirdos out there though. I'm picky about who gets my PIN.

**Tõnis** · 11-10-2011, 02:34 PM

Originally Posted by ColdSunshine

I'm not a him, but I'll share.

I've added people and had people, especially from Iraq and India, just add random numbers together until they get a live person. I block them and they keep coming back using different PINs. The worst kind of spam I keep getting are broadcast messages which I HATE and the person who sends it out gets deleted. Most of the time, it's those stupid chain mail things about how RIM will delete you off the face of the earth and a giant velociraptor will fly through your house and crap in your living room if you don't forward this to all your friends.

Lot of weirdos out there though. I'm picky about who gets my PIN.

Good enough reasons to be cautious! Thanks!

**Jaguarr40** · 11-10-2011, 06:52 PM

Originally Posted by didgit

is giving your pin out a safe thing to do ? i have friends i trust that have it but what about other people you may not know in person, how safe is it for others to have your pin ?

All you are doing if you are giving it out to someone you trust in your contacts is using it to send free messages like SMS except free if you don't have SMS on your data plan and don't care to pay as you go when you send an SMS. I use PIN messages alot along with email. You are safe so don't worry about it.

**qbnkelt** · 11-10-2011, 07:33 PM

I only give out my PIN to family members or people I've come to trust. There are a few people on this forum who have my PIN. But they're either connected to a group or they're people I've talked to and have learned to trust.
Other than than, nobody.
It's like FB. If I don't know someone personally, he/she is not on my FB.

**ichat** · 11-10-2011, 07:58 PM

Even if you get spam, you can set some firewalls set up.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

**Tõnis** · 11-10-2011, 08:22 PM

Originally Posted by ichat

Even if you get spam, you can set some firewalls set up.

Posted from my CrackBerry at wapforums.crackberry.com

Terrific tip! Thanks.

**jorkat80** · 11-10-2011, 08:38 PM

Originally Posted by ColdSunshine

............. Most of the time, it's those stupid chain mail things about how RIM will delete you off the face of the earth and a giant velociraptor will fly through your house and crap in your living room if you don't forward this to all your friends.

Lot of weirdos out there though. I'm picky about who gets my PIN.

yup....and she's hardly exaggerating either.....LoL

**Stompy** · 11-11-2011, 09:20 AM

I used to have my PIN posted everywhere, especially when RIM released tools to make it into a barcode, and add your barcode to an existing picture and stuff. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. Then I had to help a couple of users at work who were getting dozens of BBM invite requests every day. Every request came in from a different PIN and we couldn't stop them. I ended up having to block all BBM messaging on one person's phone just to make it stop but luckily he didn't use BBM anyway. Not long after that I removed my PIN and barcodes from just about everywhere.

Having said that I think the risk of something like that happening is very very low and that was an extreme case. But it made me realize that I don't even have enough time in the day to keep up with twitter and facebook and RSS feeds, let alone chatting with strangers. So for me it's no loss anyway. Plus I tried to join a couple of public BBM groups and was denied so it pissed me off anyway.

I still have my barcodes on my facebook profile (although they're for a device I no longer use LOL) and I have BBM enabled in wikitude so I'm not a total hermit. Whatever happened to that user had nothing to do with having his PIN or barcode posted anywhere online and now that I think about it it's probably very safe to have a barcode posted as that's not something a scanner would pick up. What I mean is, people write code to scour through web pages looking for email addresses so they can send spam to them. I suppose someone could do the same, looking for BBM PINs, but that doesn't seem entirely likely. But a barcode is an image - it can't be scanned by a program running on a computer - it's like having a picture of your email address posted.

HEY! I just talked myself back into it!

Thanks for asking, you helped me change my own mind!

Wait, does that make me schizophrenic?

**zgods1** · 11-11-2011, 09:29 AM

I removed my pin off of here because I had 14 adds in 24 hours, from some rather Odd people to say the least, I had a guy offering to take me to nigeria :/ (probably scam anyway) some girl asking who i'd had sex with. Another guy asking what is crackberry and should he sign up, and can he pick up chicks. So I think just keep it for people that want it for a genuine reason or it becomes another form of advertising for people and spammers!!!

**Stompy** · 11-11-2011, 09:30 AM

Oh fine, I changed my mind again.

**GingerSnapsBack** · 11-11-2011, 10:54 AM

Originally Posted by zgods1

I removed my pin off of here because I had 14 adds in 24 hours, from some rather Odd people to say the least, I had a guy offering to take me to nigeria :/ (probably scam anyway) some girl asking who i'd had sex with. Another guy asking what is crackberry and should he sign up, and can he pick up chicks. So I think just keep it for people that want it for a genuine reason or it becomes another form of advertising for people and spammers!!!

I had some guy who was only after asking how many times I had sex. Sex this, sex that. I had enough and deleted him.

Him: Hi
Me: Hi
Him: Have sex yet?
Me: I'm at work...
Him: So? When did you have sex last? Gonna get laid tonight?

Deleted!

**Danf** · 11-11-2011, 11:14 AM

Originally Posted by ColdSunshine

I had some guy who was only after asking how many times I had sex. Sex this, sex that. I had enough and deleted him.

Him: Hi
Me: Hi
Him: Have sex yet?
Me: I'm at work...
Him: So? When did you have sex last? Gonna get laid tonight?

Deleted!

So was your boyfriend or husband mad when you deleted them?

**GingerSnapsBack** · 11-11-2011, 12:34 PM

Originally Posted by izzachar

So was your boyfriend or husband mad when you deleted them?

Actually, he thought the goober who was asking me about sex all the time was funny as ****. I showed it to him and he just laughed. Then I deleted the goober.

Goober was also a little too interested in his aunt if you know what I mean.