On August 17, 2021 T-Mobile announced that they suffered a data breach impacting their customers. T-Mobile stated, “a bad actor illegally accessed personal data. Our investigation is ongoing, but we have verified that a subset of T-Mobile data had been accessed by unauthorized individuals and the data stolen from our systems did include some personal information.”
It has since been announced that social security numbers and dates of birth of over 40 million customers were exposed in this data breach. Unfortunately these types of data exposures are far too common. There is also little a customer can do to prevent their data from being exposed in these breaches.
What you can do
As stated above, there is not much you can do to not have your data exposed in these breaches, but there are steps to take once breaches like this are announced. In this particular case, T-Mobile asks customers to visit this site for more information.
If you or your business utilizes T-Mobile’s service it is important that you find out if your data has been exposed. Chances are high that it was, so with that in mind it is important to not panic.
Steps you can take:
- Change the pin to your T-Mobile account
- Monitor your payment accounts associated with your T-Mobile account
- Change your T-Mobile account password and any account that used that same password
- Consider signing up for free or paid credit and identity monitoring services
Being part of a data breach is never a fun thing to happen and far too common. It is important to stay aware of the services you are signed up for and use. By doing this you can be better prepared to take the necessary actions to minimize the risk to yourself and your business after a 3rd party breach like this one.
For more information on data breaches and cybersecurity checkout Small Business, Big Threat!