T-Mobile's data breach has reportedly affected about 47.8 million existing and previous clients of the mobile carrier. Meanwhile, roughly 7.8 million postpaid customers' personal data has been stolen by the hackers, the press release of the company confirmed.
The T-Mobile logo is seen outside a shop in Washington, DC, on July 26, 2019. - US antitrust authorities approved the USD 26 billion merger of T-Mobile and Sprint in a deal that brings together the third- and fourth-largest wireless operators as the industry moves toward deployment of superfast 5G networks.
T-Mobile Data Breach: 47 Million Users Affected
As per Reuters, T-Mobile US is still investigating the cyberattack that affected a huge bulk of their customers, which the phone carrier confirmed on Aug. 16.
By the time of the confirmation, the company has yet to know if the hackers took the personal data of their customers.
The massive data breach first unraveled on Aug. 15 after T-Mobile disclosed that it is looking into a post published on an underground forum, claiming that the personal data of their clients are being sold.
It is worth noting that the dark web forum did not mention any carrier brand, but the seller told Motherboard, the tech outlet of Vice, that the personal info was harvested from a T-Mobile data breach.
The vendor further boasted that the incident affected a whopping 100 million in the estimate, which is far contrary to the 47 million of both former and current customers that T-Mobile learned.
Hacker Steals 7.8 Million T-Mobile Customer Personal Data
According to Engadget, roughly 7.8 million T-Mobile postpaid subscribers and other potential clients who are still applying were victims of stolen personal data.
The data breach further exposed the personal data of clients in an alarming count, which included their first and last names, driver's licenses, ID information, SSN, and date of birth.
Other than those, the telecom titan has yet to confirm if the phone numbers, passwords, account numbers, and financial information of the customers have also been stolen.
On top of that, about 850,000 prepaid customers' data were also stolen by criminal minds during the cyberattack. Unlucky for these users as their account PINs, phone numbers, and names have been stolen by the hackers during the data breach.
T-Mobile added that even the "additional information," whatever that was, of the former prepaid users of the carrier, was taken by the cyber invaders.
It is worth noting that other subsidiary brands of behemoth telecom operators, specifically, Boost, Sprint, and Metro by T-Mobile are said to be unaffected by the large-scale cyber attack.
T-Mobile Stolen Personal Data Sells
The set of personal data, which the seller confirmed to be from T-Mobile, were being sold in an unnamed underground forum. The information from the 30 million telco customers is selling to the tune of $270,000 Bitcoin.
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Written by Teejay Boris
