T Mobile Data Breach Tens of millions of current, past, or prospective T-Mobile (TMUS) customers’ personal information has been exposed to hackers. The cellular carrier announced Tuesday, providing further details on a data breach it has been investigating since the weekend.
According to the company’s website, the breach impacts up to 7.8 million postpaid subscribers, 850,000 prepaid users, and “just over” 40 million previous or potential consumers who have applied for credit with T-Mobile.
While no financial information from consumers appears to have been compromised, the stolen personal information includes names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and driver’s license numbers for “a subset of current and past postpay customers and prospective T-Mobile customers.”
The firm advises all T-Mobile postpaid customers to update the PINs that safeguard their accounts as soon as possible, even though it has no information that those PINs have been hacked. However, the 850,000 prepaid users’ account PINs were hacked, and T-Mobile stated it has unilaterally changed those PINs as a security measure.
Unfortunately, dealing with data breaches is nothing new for the firm — or its consumers.
For those keeping track, this is the sixth such incident the wireless carrier has had in the last three years, but according to Allie Mellen, a security and risk analyst at Forrester Research, this is the “worst breach they’ve had so far.”
T-Mobile declined to comment on what other types of data could have been accessed during the breach, how many people had all of their sensitive information stolen, or whether the company has begun notifying affected individuals. Still, it did encourage customers to visit a new webpage designed to help secure those people against “cybersecurity threats.”
Users of other T-Mobile prepaid brands, including Metro, Boost, and former Sprint prepaid customers, have not had their PINs or identities revealed, according to T-Mobile.
T-Mobile said it would provide affected consumers with two years of free credit monitoring.
The inquiry into the incident began on Sunday after Vice revealed that hackers were selling T-Mobile user data on the dark web. T-Mobile reported a cybersecurity problem on Monday but provided no more details at the time.
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