T-Mobile hacked -- over 2 million accounts exposed

T-Mobile has revealed that it fell victim to a security incident earlier in the week, and details of around 2.3 million accounts were accessed.

The hack attack took place on Monday, August 20, and while T-Mobile stresses that no financial data was taken, it concedes that it detected "unauthorized capture of some information". The exposed data includes names, billing zip code, phone number, email address, account number and account type, which would be enough for hackers to launch successful phishing attacks.

T-Mobile isn't really saying a great deal about the incident other than trying to downplay its severity and impressing on customers that it acted quickly to stop the attack. Affecting customers in the US, the hack is not the first time T-Mobile customers have been put at risk; a couple of years ago company data was leaked via Experian.

The notice posted on the T-Mobile website reads:

Out of an abundance of caution, we wanted to let you know about an incident that we recently handled that may have impacted some of your personal information.

On August 20, our cyber-security team discovered and shut down an unauthorized access to certain information, including yours, and we promptly reported it to authorities. None of your financial data (including credit card information) or social security numbers were involved, and no passwords were compromised. However, you should know that some of your personal information may have been exposed, which may have included one or more of the following: name, billing zip code, phone number, email address, account number and account type (prepaid or postpaid).

If you have questions about this incident or your account, please contact Customer Care at your convenience. If you are a T-Mobile customer, you can dial 611, use two-way messaging on MyT-Mobile.com, the T-Mobile App, or iMessage through Apple Business Chat. You can also request a call back or schedule a time for your Team of Experts to call you through both the T-Mobile App and MyT-Mobile.com. If you are a T-Mobile For Business or Metro PCS customer, just dial 611 from your mobile phone.

We take the security of your information very seriously and have a number of safeguards in place to protect your personal information from unauthorized access. We truly regret that this incident occurred and are so sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you.

Customers whose data has been affected should have been notified by text message, but anyone with queries is encouraged to contact T-Mobile directly.

Image credit: Allmy / Shutterstock