Three Mobile confirmed that it has suffered a massive data hack in which over 133,000 users data were compromised. However, the mobile operator said that financial information as password and bank details weren't accessed by the cyber criminals and that every single customer was contacted individually.
Three Men Were Already Arrested For This Issue
According to The Guardian, three men were arrested after the cyber strike was revealed, over alleged fraudulent use of Three Mobile´s phone upgrade program in an attempt to steal some handsets. Regarding this situation, the company´s CEO Dave Dyson explained that on November 17 they were able to determine that eight users were unlawfully upgraded o a new phone by fraudsters who wanted to intercept and sell on the devices and obtain every single information from these customers.
Three Mobile investigations of the upgrade system showed that the cyber criminals could have obtained information from 107,000 customers, regarding their contract start and end date, Three account number, handset type, whether the bill is paid by card or cash, whether they are a handset or SIM only, billing date name. For another 26,725 users, the cyber criminals could have accessed information as address, name, telephone number, date o birth, email address, how long they have been a Three customer, and marital and employment status.
Three Mobile´s Case Hasn´t Be The Only One Of This Kind
According to the International Busines Times, the three men arrested were two from Manchester, which was detained under the Computer Misuse Act, and one from Kent, which was suspicion of attempting to pervert the course of the justice. All of them were released on bail pending further inquiries.
Although the problem seems to be solved, many people have shown their anger with Three Mobile through social media, claiming that the company should have informed immediately about the breach, instead of doing it at the moment it did. As reported in a previous article, a similar situation happened some weeks ago when 5 Russian banks were hacked, and apparently none delicate financial information was obtained by the hackers.
