If you have a T-Mobile account, it may be time to change your password.
The company last week issued a statement confirming a data breach wherein the personal information of almost 50 million current, former, and prospective customers had been breached.
Late last week, T-Mobile confirmed that a forum post that purported to offer data from more than 100 million people was the result of a company data breach. At that time, it was not known if personal customer data had been accessed, but T-Mobile has now confirmed that the stolen data included personal information, such as customer names, dates of birth, social security numbers, and identification such as driver’s licenses. There is as yet no indication that the data contained information about customer financial or payment information.
It’s thought that the information of 7.8 million current T-Mobile customers may have been stolen, along with the information of more than 40 million former or prospective customers. The company has been able to confirm that approximately 850,000 active T-Mobile prepaid customer names, phone numbers, and account PINs were also exposed, leading the company to proactively reset all of these PINs.
Customers are due to be contacted shortly with a two year offer from T-Mobile in which two years of free identity protection services with McAfee’s ID Theft Protection Service will be offered. The company is expected to implement an additional step to protect mobile accounts with Account Takeover Protection, and publish a new web page for information and solutions for customers to further protect themselves. Customers will also be encouraged to change their account’s PIN. T-Mobile’s investigation into the data breach is ongoing.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.