T-Mobile Confirms Data Breach Affecting 47 Million Customers
T-Mobile has announced that a staggering number of current, former, and prospective customers had their information stolen in a data breach. This news follows reports of a cyberattack that took place over the weekend.
The carrier, which has more than 100 million customers, confirmed in a statement that 7.8 million current postpaid T-Mobile customers had data like names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and driver’s license information stolen.
The company also said that personal information from 40 million former postpay customers and prospective T-Mobile customers was exposed as well.
At this time, it appears that former and prospective postpay customers did not have any additional information compromised in the data breach. Unfortunately, about 850,000 active prepaid T-Mobile customers may have also had their phone numbers, account PINs, passwords, and financial information stolen too.
The carrier’s investigation is still underway and they’ve warned that more bad news may be forthcoming. The company has reported that “some additional information from inactive prepaid accounts was accessed through prepaid billing files.” They haven’t yet revealed what type of data was exposed, only that it did not include Social Security numbers or payment information.
In response to this data breach, T-Mobile is offering 2 years of free identity protection services and recommending that all T-Mobile postpaid customers change their PIN either online in their T-Mobile account or by dialing 611 for Customer Care.
The company will also be offering Account Takeover Protection for postpaid customers, which is intended to make it harder for customer accounts to be stolen.
T-Mobile plans to launch a web page later today in an effort to provide more information and assistance for customers affected by this cyberattack.
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I have not received any notification from Tmobile.
Nor have I.
You won’t yet. It’s to come in the next week or so. This also includes old (and some current) post paid accounts through Mint Mobile, Red Pocket Mobile, Metro by T-Mobile, and Consumer Cellular.
I haven’t either. So what do we need to be doing about this? From the sound of it, it affected all T-Mobile customers?
I came across this article on Monday.
“The T-Mobile Data Breach Is One You Can’t Ignore”
https://www.wired.com/story/t-mobile-hack-data-phishing/?bxid=5cec26de24c17c4c64612435&cndid=27725575&esrc=AUTO_PRINT&mbid=mbid%3DCRMWIR012019&source=EDT_WIR_NEWSLETTER_0_DAILY_ZZ&utm_brand=wired&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_mailing=WIR_Daily_081621&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nl&utm_term=list1_p4
I am a current T-Mobile customer. I have noticed A LOT of spam calls and text the last couple of days, guess this explains it 😤
Me too. So many calls.
You can register your cell and home telephone numbers at https://www.donotcall.gov/ as to not receive spam calls. It definitely cuts down the number of these unwanted telephone calls.
Thank you, I did this a couple of years ago and it did help. The HUGE increase in calls I am currently experiencing is due to the data breach, not telemarketers. I don’t answer them, it’s just annoying and makes me wonder how much of my information they have.
Would this affect Sprint customers that they took over? I still login on the Sprint portion of their website for now. I would assume maybe?
What is a post-paid account ? One you get a bill and send in the payment ?
I just got a text saying
“T-Mobile has determined that unauthorized access to some of your personal data has occurred. We have no evidence that your debit/credit card information was compromised. We take the protection of our customers seriously. We are taking actions to protect your T-Mobile account and we recommend that you take action to protect your credit. Read more here: t-mo.co/Protect”
Thanks for sharing that with us, Jeff!