It's the dawning of a new year and the hackers of the world have been busy. This time it's US Cellular caught in the crosshairs.
The company recently reported that their billing system was hacked and they sent breach notification letters to more than four hundred impacted individuals.
US Cellular is the fourth largest carrier in the United States. Only 405 of the company's customers seem to have been affected which makes this attack quite small in terms of scope and scale. That's small consolation if you're one of the unlucky US Cellular customers to have received a notification in the mail.
The company had this to say about the incident:
"On December 13, 2021, UScellular detected a data security incident in which unauthorized individuals illegally accessed our billing system and gained access to wireless customer accounts that contain personal information.
Information in customer accounts include name, address, PIN code and cellular telephone number(s) as well as information about wireless services including service plan, usage and billing statements.
Sensitive personal information, such as Social Security number and credit card information, is masked within the CRM system. At this time, we have no indication that there has been unauthorized access to your UScellular online user account."
If you haven't received a notification in the mail from US Cellular then it's most likely that your account record was not compromised. Out of an abundance of caution, you may want to reset your account password and be on the lookout for suspicious emails targeting you. Now you may be more likely to be on the receiving end of phishing emails for a time.
Kudos to US Cellular for their rapid response. Sadly we'll probably be seeing a lot more of this kind of thing in the year ahead.
