In 2021, mobile telecommunication giant, T-Mobile, experienced a data breach that compromised the personal data of what they claim to be approximately 76.9 million US customers. However, it’s estimated that cyber criminals have stolen data belonging to over 100 million former and prospective customers. The affected customers had sensitive data such as their name, date of birth, address drivers licence, and social security number stolen.
To make a bad situation worse, T-Mobile made the decision to attempt to buy all breached data rather than telling its customers what had happened. Instead,customers were eventually notified about the privacy breach through third parties, leading to a class-action lawsuit.
T-Mobile will pay out $350 million which will be divided between customers whilst a further $150 million will be used to iupdate the company’s security through 2023 and help minimise the chances of further data breaches. It’s safe to say that this attack, along with the several other data breaches that T-Mobile has experienced over the past few years, has caused significant and possibly irreversible damage to the trust of its customers.
Already, disgruntled users have taken to online forums to complain about the regular occurrences of these data breaches. We hope that further improvements to cybersecurity measures will help prevent this from happening again so T-Mobile can begin to repair its reputation.
Although T-Mobile has admitted no guilt regarding the cyberattack, in August 2021 CEO Mike Sievert issued a public apology and stated that the company will “take significant steps to enhance its approach to cybersecurity”
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