T-Mobile tried (and failed) to recover your stolen data by paying off hackers
If you were a current, former, or even "prospective" T-Mobile customer at the time of the biggest data breach in the wireless service provider's history last summer, you might be wondering what happened with your potentially compromised personal information over the past eight months or so.
Unfortunately, there's no way to know exactly what data landed where and just how many bad actors had the chance to look at a treasure trove of names, addresses, birthdates, social security numbers, driver's licenses, phone numbers, IMEI, and IMSI numbers for a possible havoc-wreaking angle.
What's apparently true, at least according to a quick investigation conducted by the folks over at Motherboard into some recently unsealed court documents, is that T-Mobile couldn't recover the stolen customer data to put it under (digital) lock and key... again.
The "Un-carrier" did try to negotiate with the online seller of said illegally obtained information via an unnamed third party, which went so far as to pay a total of $200,000 for "exclusive" access to the data rightfully belonging to at least 30 million individuals.
But seeing as how T-Mo was dealing with a cybercriminal, it really shouldn't come as a surprise that the seller took the money while failing to respect the terms of the exclusivity agreement and continuing to share the data with other buyers whose intentions were probably not as noble as those of the nation's second-largest mobile network operator.
Although somewhat controversial... for pretty obvious reasons, Magenta's alleged hiring of a third party to carry negotiations in its name for the retrieval of stolen data is apparently fairly standard practice in these types of cases.
What might actually be more surprising is that some hackers are reportedly known for keeping their word when striking deals like this. Evidently, T-Mobile was unlucky to find a less... honorable bad actor, and more than 50 million people in total were unlucky to trust the "Un-carrier" with their data.
In case you're wondering, these court documents that seem to reveal T-Mo's desperate (but understandable) attempt to get back your data don't pertain to any trial where the carrier might find itself in the accused box, although many such lawsuits have been filed across the country since August 2021.
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