Verizon Wireless is the next winner of “Which Company Will Expose Your Data!”
So if you’re got a PIN or password with them you use elsewhere, it’s time to change it. Because the danger isn’t an attacker getting your Verizon info, it’s them using that same password or PIN to get into your email or banking information.
Here’s what Verizon Wireless left open on the web.
Six folders for each month from January through to June contained several daily log files, apparently recording customer calls from different US regions, based on the location of the company’s datacenters, including Florida and Sacramento. Each record also contained hundreds of fields of additional data, including a customer’s home address, email addresses, what kind of additional Verizon services a subscriber has, the current balance of their account, and if a subscriber has a Verizon federal government account, to name a few. One field also appeared to record a customer’s “frustration score,” by detecting if certain keywords are spoken by a customer during a call.
And even though it wasn’t Verizon Wireless’ fault for the breach, they’re still to blame since they outsourced the work to a vendor who made the mistake.
“Verizon provided the vendor with certain data to perform this work and authorized the vendor to set up AWS storage as part of this project,” said a spokesperson. “Unfortunately, the vendor’s employee incorrectly set their AWS storage to allow external access.”
A hacker doesn’t need to break into a server when a vendor leaves it out on the web. This is where I start my pitch for 1Password because the breaches, mistakes and leaks of data are not going to stop.
I have used 1Password almost a year full-time. It keeps everything safe and secure. My Verizon password (when we were customers) was a long strand of 20-something numbers and letters. It didn’t match anything and I never knew it. But 1Password did.
https://1password.com – It’s only $5 per month for up to 5 people. You can have separate vaults where you can keep your logins and personal information. There are also shared vaults which are great for couples to share common information and keep sensitive information like Social Security Numbers safe. I keep every login to a site I sign up for there as well as my banking information including routing and account numbers. I keep a profile I use to fill-in forms in web sites as well as my plastic cards I use to buy things.
Because Verizon isn’t the first company to leak your info and they are not the last company to leak your info. It’s going to happen. Over and over and over. You should sign-up for 1Password. It will take the guesswork out of passwords and sensitive information.
