The offer was scheduled for next month, when T-Mobile completes its merger process with Sprint.
Photo: ALASTAIR PIKE / AFP / Getty Images
The T-Mobile company reported Wednesday in a statement that hackers stole personal information linked to 40 million previous and potential customers who applied for credit from the telecommunications company, and the data included Social Security and driver’s license records in some cases.
The cyber attack too compromised the personal data of 7.8 million current T-Mobile postpaid customers. Phone numbers, account numbers, PINs, passwords or financial information for the nearly 50 million records and accounts were not compromised, according to T-Mobile. But about 850,000 active prepaid T-Mobile accounts had their phone numbers and account PINs exposed.
The company said it has reset all PINs for those accounts and will notify those customers immediately.
We’ve been urgently investigating the cyberattack against @T Mobile. Your privacy and data security are very important and I’m following up with the latest information. We’re taking actions to help protect our customers and will be directly reaching out with more information.
– Mike Sievert (@MikeSievert) August 18, 2021
The data theft, first reported by Vice on Sunday, was discovered in a forum post where the hacker said he had obtained data on more than 100 million people from T-Mobile’s servers.
The hacker who put the data up for sale said that they included Social Security numbers, phone numbers, names, physical addresses, and other personal information. T-Mobile confirmed Tuesday that such data was exposed in some cases.
T-Mobile reported that it will offer two years of free identity protection services with McAfee’s Identity Theft Protection Service to people affected by data theft.
Postpaid customers are also encouraged to change their PINs, either through their T-Mobile online accounts or by calling 611 on their phones to reach a customer service representative.
T-Mobile also set up a web page on data theft and the remedies the company is offering to protect its customers’ accounts. That web page can be seen here.