Earlier this week (8/17), mobile telecom provider T-Mobile announced they were breached.  The incident allegedly involved data from 100 million customers, Vice reports, though T-Mobile points to a 40 million figure — mostly involving former and prospective customers. 

Here is a recap of events:

  • Sunday, August 15: Vice reports that data allegedly stolen from T-Mobile servers may include such information as social security numbers, phone numbers, names, physical addresses and driver licenses information.
  • Monday, August 16: In a blog, T-Mobile confirms cybersecurity incident, but has not yet determined if any personal customer data was stolen.
  • Tuesday, August 17:
    • Approximately 7.8 million current T-Mobile postpaid customer accounts’ information appears to be contained in stolen files.
    • Just over 40 million records of former or prospective customers who had previously applied for credit with T-Mobile are in the stolen files.
    • No phone numbers, account numbers, PINs, passwords, or financial information were compromised in any of these files of customers or prospective customers.
    • Approximately 850,000 active T-Mobile prepaid customer names, phone numbers and account PINs were also exposed. T-Mobile reset ALL of the PINs on these accounts to help protect these customers. No Metro by T-Mobile, former Sprint prepaid, or Boost customers had their names or PINs exposed.
    • Some of the data accessed did include customers’ first and last names, date of birth, SSN, and driver’s license/ID information for a subset of current and former postpay customers and prospective T-Mobile customers.
      Source: T-Mobile, August 17, 2021
  • Wednesday, August 18: The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announces investigation of T-Mobile US data breach.  Source: Reuters, August 18, 2021.
  • Thursday, August 19: T-Mobile has launched a Data Breach webpage to share the latest investigation updates, and to offer next-step security guidance for customers. The webpage will feature ongoing updates from the 5G service provider. Source: T-Mobile, August 19, 2021.
  • Friday, August 20: 
    • 7.8 million current T-Mobile postpaid customer accounts that included first and last names, date of birth, SSN, and driver’s license/ID information was compromised.
    • An additional 5.3 million current postpaid customer accounts that had one or more associated customer names, addresses, date of births, phone numbers, IMEIs and IMSIs illegally accessed. These additional accounts did not have any SSNs or driver’s license/ID information compromised.
    • 40 million former or prospective T-Mobile customers, including first and last names, date of birth, SSN, and driver’s license/ID information, were compromised. An additional 667,000 accounts of former T- Mobile customers that were accessed with customer names, phone numbers, addresses and dates of birth compromised.
      Source: T-Mobile, August 20, 2021

Could your information be compromised?  Know the steps to take if you fall victim to a data breach.