T-Mobile breach exposes personal information of 40 million US users
A security breach against T-Mobilehas exposed personal information, including social security numbers (SSN) and pins in some cases, of more than 40 million users, the company said in a statement on Wednesday morning.
The same data for about 7.8 million current T-Mobile post-paid customers appears to be compromised. No phone numbers, account numbers, pins, passwords or financial information from the nearly 50m records and accounts were compromised, it said.
T-Mobile also confirmed that approximately 850,000 active T-Mobile prepaid customer names, phone numbers and account pins were exposed. The company said that it proactively reset all of the pins on those accounts. No Metro by T-Mobile, formerly Sprint prepaid, or Boost customers had their names or pins exposed.
Other information that has been recorded stolen include customers’ first and last names, date of birth and driver’s license information belonging to current and former postpaid customers. Some information, which the company did not specify, was also exposed from the billing fees of inactive prepaid accounts. These files did not include any financial information or social security of the users.
The company, which crossed 100 million users in November, shared the results of an investigation they announced just two days earlier when they confirmed claims that their data had been “illegally accessed”.
In Monday’s statement, the company said that they are “confident” the point of entry for the hacking has been shut down. The Guardian has reached out to T-Mobile for further clarification on whether this is confirmed.
The company has offered its customers two years of free identity protection services to ensure the protection of their personal information.
According to the statement, the company is coordinating with law enforcement agencies as they continue the investigation.
T-Mobile, which is based in Bellevue, Washington, became one of the country’s largest cellphone service carriers, along with AT&T and Verizon, after buying rival Sprint.
T-Mobile has previously disclosed a number of data breaches over the years, including in November 2019 and August 2018, both of which involved unauthorized access to customer information. In 2015, hackers stole personal information belonging to about 15 million T-Mobile wireless customers and potential customers in the US, which they obtained from the credit reporting agency Experian.