T-mobile admitted today that it has indeed been hacked and has lost a lot sensitive customer information. But how much data is now the question.
T-Mobile has admitted that hackers breached its internal servers and that company investigators are in the process of determining if the incident involves the theft of sensitive customer data. T-mobile said in a statement; “We have determined that unauthorized access to some T-Mobile data occurred, however we have not yet determined that there is any personal customer data involved. We have been working around the clock to investigate claims being made that T-Mobile data may have been illegally accessed.”
Now here is the problem. Some news sources have estimated that as many 100 million records were heisted from the cellular service company. Other say as little as 350,000 records. Nobody really knows how many or what was taken. Not even T-Mobile. And that ain’t good.
Here is what the hacker says he stole; 100 million personal records 36 million are unique. Part of the stolen data contained as many as 30 million Social Security and driver’s license numbers. He also claims he stole names, addresses, birth dates and technical phone data such as International Mobile Subscriber Identity, or IMSI, and International Mobile Equipment Identity, or IMEI, numbers and security PINs. All this is up for sale for six bitcoins, worth about $286,000.
So now what do you do? First, change your password and implement two factor authentication. NOW! Next, delete all your old accounts if you are not using them. Example, if you have not been to a website in more than a year then you are not using it. How can you do that? Type in the usernames and emails you’ve used into Google. You can also look for phrases such as “welcome to” or “new account” in your inbox. If you are not actively shopping for a car or house make sure you freeze credit and monitor all your financial accounts routinely. Stay alert to any funny charges on your accounts, emails asking for information or offering too-good-to-be-true deals.
And here is another step you can take to protect yourself. Watch your mail. I mean the mail that arrives from the postal service. If you see new junk mail, or offers from stores or companies you have never done business with then that could be a clue that someone may be using your name and address. Be alert!
Now you know
