T-Mobile customers may have had some of their personal information exposed to hackers earlier this week, according to a notice sent out by the carrier. The breach happened on August 20, and the company claims to have quickly discovered and shut down the unauthorized access to customer information.
The announcement states that financial information and social security numbers were not among the data that could have been accessed, and passwords were also safe from the breach. Regardless, personal information such as names, zip codes for billing addresses, contact information, and account number may have been visible, which is still cause for concern.
Speaking with Motherboard, a spokesperson for the carrier said that only "about 3%" of customers were affected by the breach. This may not seem like much, but it"s still significant considering that there are nearly 77 million people on the network.
T-Mobile says the attack was carried out by hackers part of an international group, but no specifics were given. The carrier is also sending out SMS messages to notify customers who might have been affected. If you don"t receive one, you"re probably safe from the incident.
This isn"t the first time T-Mobile makes the news for security-related problems in recent months, but the carrier seems to respond quickly and effectively to these situations. Hopefully, work continues to prevent them from happening again.
Source: T-Mobile, Motherboard via Reuters