The details of 15 million T-Mobile customers are now in the hands of hackers.
Experian North America reported a breach in its security system. Experian is the credit service used by mobile carrier T-Mobile.
The T-Mobile business unit was attacked by hackers. These hackers may have stolen the information of millions of recent T-Mobile signups.
The investigation is still under way. The full extent of the damage is unclear.
Experian reports that those who had a credit check between 1 September, 2013 and 16 September, 2015 are affected.
The breach occurred approximately two weeks before Experian’s announcement. It took two days for the company to notice that the security risk had occurred. Experian says that once it was notice, it was immediately repaired. A full investigation was issued soon after.
The breach was not the fault of T-Mobile. The accounts of subscribers at the company were not affected by this breach. The payment details of subscribers were not affected.
Instead, the hackers walked away with millions of Social Security numbers as well as ID numbers from passports or divers licenses.
Hackers also have names, addresses and birthdates to match this private information.
The fields in the credit check containing sensitive information are secured by cryptography. The hackers seem to have circumnavigated or broken the encryption to steal the data.
Although people are unhappy with the breach, T-Mobile does not seem to be taking the heat.
Instead, the ‘uncarrier’ has seen praise for the way it has handled the incident. T-Mobile CEO John Legere expressed his anger in a blog post on T-Mobile’s website.
The executive took the Internet to reaffirm his commitment to customer privacy. He also assured customers that he would review the company’s relationship with Experian and perhaps ask customers to use privacy software, such as Leo privacy guard, to protect their data.
T-Mobile has spent the last few years ramping up its efforts to separate itself from other mobile leaders. By introducing non-commitment contracts and transparent packages, it has become a new kind of mobile service provider.
Any customers who worry about the breach have been awarded two years of credit monitoring on the expense of T-Mobile and Experian. Both companies hope that this will act as compensation for those affected by the security breach.
