T-Mobile data breach

[Blu617]

Hello Everyone,

I was just reading that T-Mobile had a data breach of about 40 million customers personal information. This is a bit concerning to me being that I am a T-Mobile customer myself. Recently I've been trying to keep my reports frozen but due to accepting a new job pending a background investigation I have had to remove the freeze. I've been knocking myself out to repair my credit and I don't want to see it get ruined. Does anyone have any tips on how to best protect myself in case my information has possibly been compromised?

[SoCalGardener]

First and foremost, don't get too worried about this! I've been involved in a few high-profile breaches, and with each company they contacted me, explained what happened, gave me a free one-year (or more) subscription to a credit monitoring service, and reassured me that any fraudulent activity involving my identity should be resolved quickly with any creditors. NOTHING ever happened. I mean there was never any bad outcome from the breaches. I don't know why scumbags bother stealing information and then don't do anything with it!

But, whatever, my point is you probably don't have anything to worry about. I'd get those reports locked again ASAP as a safeguard, though.

[CH-7-Mission-Accomplished]

Put a fraud alert on your accounts.   If you call it in to one credit bureau they will notify the other two.   With the fraud alert lenders won't open new credit in your name without getting supporting ID.    Once your employer background check is done, you can remove the fraud alert and go back to using the lock feature.   Anyone can put a fraud alert on their credit files.   The only down side is if you open credit while it's in place, you will also have to provide ID to the new lender.

[FireMedic1]

Call the employer and ask if your background report is completed. If so. Freeze your files again on the CRA's websites.

[Anonymous]

Just an FYI, your report doesn't need to be unlocked for a background check to run a credit report. I currently work for a company and the inquiry is coded to denote it is for employment if they hard pull you. 

[Blu617]

I was kind of confused because the original documentation that they had provided me when I received my contingent offer of employment stated that I would need to lift or remove a security freeze with the credit reporting agencies so that they could access my credit file. However, I reached out to them and they stated that it was a non-issue and that it wouldn't impact or slow down the processing. I replaced my security freeze with all 3 Credit Bureaus.

[SoCalGardener]

I heard on the news that T-Mobile was providing all of its affected customers with two years of free credit monitoring. Kind of like what I said happened in my cases!

So take advantage of their offer and then just forget about it. I mean, don't really FORGET about it, but don't worry about it. If anything happens, you'll be alerted, plus you won't be held liable for any fraudulent activity on your accounts.

[MileHigh96]

This is the message I received from T-Mobile on Friday concerning the breach:

[MileHigh96]

@Blu617- I got a fraud warning alert from ExtraCredit about this so I decided to take it a little more seriously.

I went to TU and put an initial fraud alert on my account which is good from 1 year going forward and to make it even easier, they are going to let both EXP and EQ about it so that they will put the warning on my CR at each of those places.  It just means that if someone applies for credit in my name that the CRA needs to take an extra step to verify that it's actually me and not someone trying to commit fraud. I figure since I am starting over and rebuilding my credit, I don't need anything hinky to show up and screw things up already worse than what they are.

[MileHigh96]

Just wanted to put this out there to anyone else who uses T-Mobile and got an alert about the data breach. I didn't even notice it until yesterday, but if you login to you T-Mobile account and go to the area where they discuss the breach, you can take advantage of 2 years of free identity theft monitoring from McAfee.

I signed up for it yesterday and got the email this morning to finish my account set-up. Really easy and they will monitor just about anything you can think of.