Last week, Tracfone alerted its customers of a security breach they discovered in their system. Some of the affected customers found themselves on Metro by T-Mobile’s network without their authorization. And today, T-Mobile is shedding more light on the matter.
According to Tracfone, they first received complaints of similar incidents around the holidays. This prompted them to release a statement:
“We were recently made aware of bad actors gaining access to a limited number of customer accounts and, in some cases, fraudulently transferring, or porting out, mobile telephone numbers to other carriers. These bad actors may have had access to your name, address, PIN code, account number, secret question (but not answer) and email address to the extent you provided us with such information.”
Due to some port outs being made, however, Tracfone was unable to reach all of the customers affected by the incident. The customers who were ported to a different network may not have received Tracfone’s message.
For its part, T-Mobile has conducted its own investigation and discovered that there was “no fraud or data breach of any sort” on their end. The Un-carrier also shared that unauthorized transfers “are unfortunately an industry-wide issue.”
Verizon Wireless, which now owns Tracfone, revealed that they are adding a security measure to combat unauthorized port-outs. Whenever a transfer request has been made on an account, Verizon will now send Tracfone customers a text notification. Verizon hopes that this will put a stop to such attacks.
Source: PhoneArena