T-Mobile says that a “criminal hack” accessed data of some prepaid wireless customers’ accounts.
Devin Coldewey for TechCrunch:
T-Mobile has confirmed a data breach affecting more than a million of its customers, whose personal data (but no financial or password data) was exposed to a malicious actor.
The company said in its disclosure to affected users that its security team had shut down “malicious, unauthorized access” to prepaid data customers. The data exposed appears to have been:
• Name
• Billing address
• Phone number
• Account number
• Rate, plan and calling features (such as paying for international calls)When I asked, a T-Mobile representative indicated that “less than 1.5 percent” of customers were affected, which of the company’s approximately 75 million users adds up to somewhat over a million.
MacDailyNews Take: T-Mobile told customers, “we take the security of your information very seriously,” a claim which, of course, is not supported by the fact that they just ineptly leaked the personal data of over a million people.