T-Mobile admits 40 million customers have had Social Security numbers stolen by hackers trying to sell it online
The company plans to offer affected customers two years of identity protection services
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Your support makes all the difference.Hackers who breached T-Mobile's network have stolen information from more than 40 million people, according to a company spokesperson.
The information that was stolen includes Social Security numbers and driver's licenses.
The company revealed the breach earlier this week in response to reports of its customer information appearing for sale on a hacking forum. The hackers were selling the data for 6 bitcoin, or about $280,000.
“Importantly, no phone numbers, account numbers, PINs, passwords, or financial information were compromised in any of these files of customers or prospective customers,” the company said in a statement.
Motherboard first reported on the breach Sunday.
While T-Mobile claims only 40 million people’s information was compromised, the hackers claim they have closer to 100 million people’s personal information.
Neither group claimed that credit card information was stolen.
“We have no indication that the data contained in the stolen files included any customer financial information, credit card information, debit or other payment information,” T-Mobile said in a statement.
Last names, birthdates, and driver's license information was obtained for a subset of the company's customers.
PINs, names, and phone numbers of approximately 850,000 of its pre-paid customers was also stolen.
Customers using Metro by T-Mobile, Boost Mobile, and those who joined the company via Sprint were not included in the data breach.
It is not immediately clear the extent to which the different groups of customers overlap.
On Wednesday, T-Mobile said it had reset the PIN codes of all of the compromised prepaid accounts and recommended to its postpaid customers that they do the same.
T-Mobile said it plans to offer two years of free identity protection services from McAfee to affected customers.
The company will launch a special website later today detailing the hack and providing information for concerned customers.
“We take our customers’ protection very seriously and we will continue to work around the clock on this forensic investigation to ensure we are taking care of our customers in light of this malicious attack,” T-Mobile said in a statement.
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