1.9 Million Bell Customer Email Addresses Stolen By 'Anonymous Hacker' (www.cbc.ca)

Bell, Canada's largest telecommunications company, said a hacker had accessed customer information containing about 1.9 million active email addresses and about 1,700 names and active phone numbers. The breach was not connected to the recent global WannaCry malware attacks, the company added. From a report: The information appears to have been posted online, but the company could not confirm the leaked data was one and the same. "There is no indication that any financial, password or other sensitive personal information was accessed," the company wrote in a statement. Bell said the incident was unrelated to the massive spike in ransomware infections that affected an estimated 200,000 computers in more than 150 countries late last week. It is not clear when the breach occurred, how the data was accessed, or how long the attacker had access to Bell's systems.

Comments

Pepperidge Farm remembers...

[grep -v '.*' *]

1.9 million active email addresses and about 1,700 names and active phone numbers.

Remember the good old days when phone books ruled the earth? *1 The intrusion! OMG -- people could actually see how to spell your full name! AND obtain your phone number! AND your actual physical address. OH, the HORROR!! ( Heck, I understand the police force back then actually had phone number sorted phone-books instead of alphabetic ones for detective ease of use.)

Now, tying it to a specific usage case (customers) IS a little more specific, but being a customer of "Bell Canada's largest telecommunications company" isn't exactly an exclusive club. Same for the email addresses -- it's easy and effectively free to spam those, but aren't they receiving spam already? And just because "knowing" someone's there doesn't mean they'll actually be reading your message. Although it IS an ever-so-slightly more of a chance that they will. Almost doesn't seem like it's worth the bother -- but then again, I don't know anything about in the spam ecosystem.

It's still a bad event and should be prevented, but still: yawn. There is no indication that any [other data] was accessed" I'd be worried about what ELSE they did while they were (ARE) in there.

*1: You might not, but *I* do. Heck, I used and remember when the prefix was words and not just 7 or 10 numeric digits -- Mine was LOcust followed by 5 digits. My mom had a party line (single line shared between families, each with a separate ring) and even used a phone without a dial -- you picked it up and talked to the operator who then dialed it for you.

Phone book leak?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this like "leaking" the old phone book? Name, address, telephone # (and now email address)?