Bell Canada Informs its Customers about Hack into their Private Information

Bell Canada recently admitted that hackers got away with its customers' personal information. According to the telco, the stolen details included names, numbers and usernames of accounts, e-mail ids, while within certain instances, phone numbers. However, banking and credit card details remained intact.

The hack occurred merely 8 months following an unknown PC attacker stealing 1.9m customer e-mails out of Bell's database. Bell is the biggest telco in Canada that supports more than 22m customers. According to the telecom company, it found no evidence of theft of banking, credit card alternatively any other information. An investigation into the incident was ongoing, confirmed the RCMP.

John Watson executive vice-president at Bell for customer experience stated within an e-mail dated January 23 and intended for consumers impacted with the hack that their accounts were now equipped with more security authentication as well as identification requirements. He advised consumers to reset their passwords as well as security questions more often while routinely examine accounts for dubious operations. Watson wrote that Bell considered the safeguard of corporate as also customer details most important. Financialpost.com posted this, January 23, 2018.

While alerting its consumers, Bell Canada said the affected individuals on their overall list would be provided extra security, identification and authentication requirements. During May, Bell Canada disclosed that an unknown hacker was able to effectively gain admission into some 1.9m working e-mail addresses as also some 1,700 customers' working phone numbers along with names. It is necessary that people understand centralized data can be targeted in online attacks.

The most recent data hack that Bell encountered comes after a number of other prominent breaches against organizations which have impacted the people of Canada during recent months, most importantly Equifax the credit monitoring firm and Uber the car-hailing business, although the said organizations didn't at once announce the hacks.

The Canadian government has started examining modifications in the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act under which organizations would have to inform the public should any severe data hack occur. The province of Alberta in Canada alone follows compulsory reporting of issues by private-sector firms in the country.

» SPAMfighter News - 2/2/2018