One of our readers sent over a screenshot of a message he received from T-Mobile informing him of a “security event” under his account. The message contained a link to a website that explained the issue, to which the subscriber called customer service to ask more information about the matter. Our source informed him that while his account is 100% secure, the security event was more than his account. Unfortunately, we reached out to T-Mobile for confirmation but couldn’t get past their chatbot. 

Today, we’re finally getting more information about the matter. 

A Reddit thread shared details about the similar security event notification that our source received. This was then confirmed by other customers who received the same text message. But as revealed on the thread, the issue doesn’t seem to affect every single T-Mo customer. Only those who received the message containing the link were affected by the security event. 

This is somewhat similar to another incident that took place late last year. Thankfully, it didn’t reach widespread and affect every customer. And to make things better, T-Mo has been transparent about the issue and even set up a dedicated page that gave in depth details about the compromised information.

As detailed on the page, it doesn’t seem to be a serious attack. The Un-carrier shares that the hackers were only able to obtain “customer proprietary network information (CPNI)”, which does not include customers’ personal information. According to the rules set by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), CPNI refers to phone numbers and the number of lines associated with some accounts. In a few cases, this referred to the information usually gathered in a phone call “as part of the normal operation of your wireless service”.

To make the story short, you don’t have to worry about the hack getting access to the name on your T-Mobile account, your physical and email address, credit card information, social security number, financial data, passwords, PINs, or tax ID. 

Again, only customers who received the text message from T-Mobile were affected by the breach. T-Mobile says that the data breach took place some time last month and only affected a small number of its customers. Even though the Un-carrier did not exactly specify the number of customers affected by the issue, they revealed that “less than 0.2%” of its customers were notified about the issue. 

Were you among those who received the text message? 

Thanks, David!

Source: 1, 2