Mobile phone service provider T-Mobile has announced a data breach of its customer information.
According to a post on the carrier’s website the hack was discovered on August 20 by its cybersecurity team. The team shut down unauthorized access to certain information and T-Mobile quickly reported the incident to authorities. T-Mobile reported that the attackers did not get access to financial information, social security numbers, or passwords. However the company did admit that some personal information may have been compromised including name, billing zip code, phone number, email address, account number and account type.
In a statement T-Mobile said, “Out of an abundance of caution, we wanted to let you know about an incident that we recently handled that may have impacted some of your personal information. We take the security of your information very seriously and have a number of safeguards in place to protect your personal information from unauthorized access. We truly regret that this incident occurred and are so sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you.”
T-Mobile did not report any exact number of customers affected by the breach. But a spokesperson for the company told Motherboard that it impacted roughly “3 percent” of its 77 million customers amounting to around two million people. “Fortunately not many,” the spokesperson said in a text message, adding she could not say the exact number, reported Motherboard.
T-Mobile is the third largest cell service provider in the U.S. with 77 million customers. The company has about half the customers of Verizon and AT&T with 152 million and 147 million customers respectively.
