T-Mobile breach leaks 50 million users’ personal information

In a statement issued by T-Mobile, personal information – including the names, driver’s licenses, and other identification details – of over 40 million former and current customers have been compromised in a recent data breach.

T-Mobile has about 7.8 million postpaid and about 850,000 active prepaid customers whose information appears to be exposed. Notably, no phone numbers, account numbers, PINs, passwords, or financial information of the postpaid users were compromised.

As for prepaid users, their names, phone numbers, and account PINs were also exposed. Metro by T-Mobile, former Sprint prepaid, and Boost customers’ PINs and names were not exposed, according to the company.

T-Mobile said that it has reset all of the PINs on the accounts of the victims in the data breach, and will be contacting them shortly. They will be offered the following:

• Immediately offering 2 years of free identity protection services with McAfee’s ID Theft Protection Service.
• Recommending all T-Mobile postpaid customers proactively change their PIN by going online into their T-Mobile account or calling our Customer
  Care team by dialing 611 on your phone. This precaution is despite the fact that we have no knowledge that any postpaid account PINs were compromised.
• Offering an extra step to protect your mobile account with our Account Takeover Protection capabilities for postpaid customers, which makes it harder for customer accounts to be fraudulently ported out and stolen.
• Publishing a unique web page later on Wednesday for one stop information and solutions to help customers take steps to further protect themselves.

T-Mobile is a German telecommunication company that provides wireless voice communication, messaging, and data services. The company has the second-largest wireless network in the United States.