Experian hack exposes personal information of 15 million customers

Credit data agency Experian has been hacked, meaning up to 15 million people may have had their private payment information exposed.

 

Security breach

The payments processor specialises in helping businesses to manage credit risk, prevent fraud, target marketing offers and automate decision making.

Experian was put in charge of handling data for millions of T-mobile customers, including debit and credit card numbers. Information obtained from the hack could also include names, addresses, social security, driver’s license and passport numbers.

The processor belives that encrypted data may also have been hacked, and that the hack specifically affects “those who applied for T-Mobile USA postpaid services or device financing from September 1, 2013 through September 16, 2015.”

“Experian discovered an unauthorized party accessed T-Mobile data housed in an Experian server,” said in a statement.

“Obviously I am incredibly angry about this data breach and we will institute a thorough review of our relationship with Experian, but right now my top concern and first focus is assisting any and all consumers affected,” wrote T-Mobile’s CEO, John Legere.

The situation has escalated incredibly quickly, with Irish security startup Trustev finding that some of the hacked infomation is already up for sale on the dark web.

“I take our customer and prospective customer privacy VERY [sic] seriously. This is no small issue for us. I do want to assure our customers that neither T-Mobile’s systems nor network were part of this intrusion and this did not involve any payment card numbers or bank account information.”

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