I received a notification by mail that my personal data was compromised in the T-mobile data breach in 2021 and it is possible to receive a slight settlement credit, two years of identity defense services, etc. If your personal data got impacted you may watch for a letter in the mail.
What botters me is that I was/am not a T-mobile customer and it is not clear the way that they got my personal data and could not protect them. It seems that their claim is correct (not a glitch), and they have my personal data because they sent the letter to my home address. Does anyone have the same experience in the other data breaches?
Fico8: EX~EQ~TU~810 (12 month goal~840).
SO thankful for the trolls and whistleblowers of the world in light of stuff like this. I mean, it doesn't matter because they still get away with it, but at least we can make an informed decision... they're all incompetents.
It looks to be similar to the other data breaches. My personal data got impacted ~6 times in the past 6 years (almost once per year), not sure when these issues are going to get solved anytime soon:
- Collecting unnecessary significant amount of personal information, even from non-customers. Is it even legal?
- Collecting SSN and maiden's name, in several businesses (like several doctor offices). There should be some organizations to be able to report these issues and they should get charged.
- Avoid protecting such huge databases of people (in T-mobile the info of ~70M users got impacted).
- Deny any wrongdoing and try to settle with ~10-100$.
By this high number of data breaches, not sure whether a personal information like SSN would have any further meaning. When I was living in Europe, I was not seeing anything like this...
@xenon3030 I don't know if it can be fixed. It's data, I mean once your SS# is out there on the Internet, that's it. They've got it for life. There's no way to get it back. I was part of the T-Mobile, Home Depot, and the most egregious, Equifax breach. It's over, done.
I am not sure whether they remove the breached personal data from e.g. darkweb, while the data might be still in the hand of wrong people for some years and afterward, a damage can be done. So, 1-2 years of credit monitoring is insufficient. It should be life-time. I already have credit monitoring service from Equifax settlement for I think ~7 years and based on the current trend of data breaches, possibly I would receive more credit monitoring offers in the upcoming future...
It is possible to prevent some issues. If they regulate and limit personal data collection, similar to Europe and GDPR, AND highly protect the personal data, the possible damages due to data breaches can be much less. In Europe, even when they collect personal data at some places, they need to keep it only for limited time e.g. 6 months.
The current revision of personal data collection/protection in CA vs the European version is very weak while it might be better than nothing. In case of no immediate harm, the attorneys even in CA, recommend simply joining the settlement or the arbitration campaign. So, even collecting the personal information of "prospective customers" without consent seems to have no claim value in CA.
