Freedom Mobile is warning customers about a privacy breach that exposed personal details for what the company says was a limited number of users.
The carrier said it first spotted “unauthorized activity” on October 23 involving its customer account management system. According to the company, a third party got in by using the account of an unnamed subcontractor.
Freedom says it moved quickly once the activity was detected. The company said it blocked the suspicious accounts and IP addresses and added new security protections. “At Freedom Mobile, we take the protection of personal information very seriously,” said the notice published on December 3 on the company’s website.
The information that was viewed includes a customer’s first and last name, home address, date of birth, phone number, and Freedom Mobile account number. The company stressed that “this incident did not affect your payment information or passwords.”
Freedom said it has “no reason to believe that this information was misused,” but is telling people to be careful for any unusual messages or requests for personal details. “Freedom Mobile will never ask you for personal information such as credit card numbers, banking information, passwords, or PIN codes by email or SMS,” the company wrote.
The carrier is also advising customers to avoid suspicious links and monitor their accounts for anything out of the ordinary. Freedom apologized for the situation, saying, “We’re sorry this happened and understand it may cause concern.”
Anyone with questions is being directed to contact the company at pr************@***********le.ca.
Back in May 2019, Freedom Mobile disclosed a data breach that affected up to 15,000 customers.
We’ve reached out to Freedom Mobile for comment on how many customers were affected, and will update this story accordingly.
Update: Freedom Mobile sent the following statement to iPhone in Canada: “The incident affected a limited number of customers in no particular geographical location. We quickly identified and resolved the issue, and we did implement additional measures with our third-party contractors to prevent similar incidents in future. However, for obvious security reasons, we will not disclose further information about these measures.”
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give us more data or a few bucks off the bill for comp
Your information may or may not be in the hands of a third party. We do not wish to say exactly whose information was affected because we don't know or don't want to admit the scope of the problem. It's fixed though. We removed their access and hope it doesn't happen again.
I'm not defending freedom here, they should at the very least let affected customers know what information is theirs may have been leaked. There's no reason they can't tell me via email that my phone number and account number along with my address got out or whatever. But I do wanna point out, if you think your name, phone number and address aren't already out there you either somehow live a life devoid of any online accounts or presence, or more likely you are fooling yourself because even the likes of credit bearues have had leaks and they have everyone's info