If you called Verizon customer support during the past six months, change your PIN right this second. A misconfigured server with the company’s customer info left a whole bunch of personal data and private details exposed, and cybersecurity firm UpGuard discovered the issue and sounded the alarm.
Customer names, physical addresses, emails, phone numbers, and even PINs were exposed by the server issue. According to Verizon, six million customers who have called the company’s customer service lines in the past half year or so were affected by the bad server configuration. The issue has since been fixed, but here’s what you need to know if you’re a Verizon customer:
- If you’ve called Verizon customer service within the last six months or so, your private information was readily available online.
- This issue only affects customers who have contacted Verizon by phone since January.
- You should immediately change your PIN, as well as the login details of any other services, apps, or accounts that you used the same PIN or password for.
- Verizon says “no loss or theft of customer data occurred,” but if the information was publicly available to anyone with the specific web address identified by the security researchers, it’s impossible to know if any of it fell into the wrong hands.
- If your phone number and/or email address was also obtained, you may see an influx of spam emails or telemarketing calls.
The computer system that leaked the information is run by one of Verizon’s third party partners called NICE Systems, which helps facilitate the phone support for the company. Verizon hasn’t commented on whether or not it will continue doing business wi the company.