Over the past week, T-Mobile confirmed that it was the subject of a massive data breach that exposed the personal information of at least 50 million people. That information includes first and last names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, and driver's license information. That's pretty much the worst-case scenario, and the only reason we found out is that the company responded to a report from Vice's Motherboard.
The information belongs mostly to individuals who applied for accounts with T-Mobile and provided the information for the purposes of a credit check. That means that even people who aren't actually customers are likely affected if they ever tried to open an account.
The company's response has been, well, disappointing. For example, I'm a T-Mobile customer, and I've yet to receive a single communication from the company about the breach. Does that mean my information is safe? It's hard to know.
T-Mobile is talking to news outlets, however, and wants to make it very clear that "no financial information or credit or debit card information" was compromised. That's not particularly reassuring if someone has all of the other information they would need to simply open a credit card in your name.
Even worse, this gives SIM-swapping hackers a huge gift. If you're not familiar with SIM-swapping, it's where someone is able to convince a phone carrier that they are someone else, and have that person's phone number switched to their control.
That may seem like a strange hack unt ..
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