A huge data breach has seen the private information of some 40 million T-Mobile customers put on sale by hackers. While the US mobile carrier – the third-largest operating in the country – maintains that only 40 million have been impacted, the hackers claim to have the personal details of 100 million customers. To put that claim into perspective, T-Mobile only has around 104.79 million customers in the United States.
Hackers stole critical data, including driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers, before making it available to the highest bidder on a hacking forum. Fortunately, banking details of T-Mobile customers appears to be unaffected by the data breach, which was revealed a few hours ago. T-Mobile was only alerted to the vast breach after the attempts to sell the stolen information was publicised in news reports.
“Importantly, no phone numbers, account numbers, PINs, passwords, or financial information were compromised in any of these files of customers or prospective customers,” T-Mobile tried to reassure panicked customers in its latest statement.
However, birthdates, last names and details from driver’s license were all obtained by the hackers… and are now available to buy. PINs, names and phone numbers of some 850,000 pre-paid customers were also included in the breach. T-Mobile has already reset the PINs of all compromised pre-paid accounts. It has recommended that all post-paid customers do the same.
While T-Mobile did previously operate in the UK, it was joined with Orange to become EE in 2012. It is now owned by BT, which has not announced any evidence of data leaks.