T-Mobile reveals the company’s second data breach since the start of 2023, although this one was on a significantly smaller scale. The company reports only 836 customers were affected this time around according to BleepingComputer.
The company reset account PINs and offered free credit monitoring and identity theft detection via Transunion myTrueIdentity for the next two years.
In an email sent to affected customers, T-Mobile states:
“Our systems recently detected that a bad actor accessed limited information from a small number of T-Mobile accounts, including your T-Mobile account PIN. Personal financial account information and call records were NOT affected. Our systems and policies enabled T-Mobile teams to identify the activity, terminate it, and implement measures to protect against it from occurring again in the future. To further protect your account, we have already proactively reset your PIN.
While we have a number of safeguards in place to prevent unauthorized access such as this from happening, we recognize that we must continue to make improvements to stay ahead of bad actors. We take these issues seriously. We apologize that this happened and are furthering efforts to enhance the security of your information.”
The previous breach was detected on January 5th when “a threat actor stole the personal information of 37 million current postpaid and prepaid customer accounts through one of its Application Programming Interfaces.” T-Mobile disclosed the breach had been ongoing since late November of 2022.
“No personal financial account information or call records were affected. The information obtained for each customer varied but may have included full name, contact information, account number and associated phone numbers, T-Mobile account PIN, social security number, government ID, date of birth, balance due, internal codes that T-Mobile uses to service customer accounts, and the number of lines,” T-Mobile states regarding the current breach.
T-Mobile recommends customers review their account information, update their PINs, change passwords, and monitor all account activity, including their credit reports. The company advises setting up fraud alerts with all three major credit bureaus and placing a freeze on their credit file.
Concerned customers can reach out to T-Mobile’s customer service line for more information.