Brian Krebs posted last week that Sprint is claiming an employee has stolen customer data, including pin numbers and the “security question” you can use to recover a password. This is a vendor I have been following for a long time, and I’m surprised we have not seen this type of activity before. From Brian’s blog:

“It appears this employee may have provided customer information to a third party in violation of Sprint policy and state law. We have terminated this employee. The information that may have been compromised includes your name, address, wireless phone number, Sprint account number, the answer to your security question, and the name of the authorized point of contact on your account.”

I wonder if they ever managed to remove the customer’s social security number as the primary key for their customer care database? It would appear that they did at least remove CC# and SSN# from the customer care application UI, which was my primary beef with them:

“We implemented a billing platform about a year ago that has advanced security features designed to catch things like an employee accessing information that they shouldn’t be,” Sullivan said. “That platform limits information that employees can access, such as Social Security numbers, and any sort of payment information.”

I have always considered Sprint lax in regards to their data security practices. They exposed my information before any breach notification laws were in effect, with my personal and billing information going to a third party. Worse, the person who obtained the data called customer care and was subsequently provided my SSN# and was able to shut off my account. Not sure what these “advanced security features” are exactly, but I would need to concede that the improvement must be working if the credit card numbers that they require for account creation were not stolen as well.

I really do wonder if (hope) this will prompt some form of internal investigation, and I always wonder if Sprint could be considered a contributor in this breach case if they provided employees far more data that was necessary to do their jobs. Think of it this way: If it was “thousands” of accounts, clearly the employee must have had access and been able to copy them electronically.

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