It’s always a good thing to regularly change your passwords to your accounts. As much as you may hate the process of changing or remembering passwords. It’s especially important to change your passwords or pins after any identified data breaches. Considering T-Mobile has confirmed another breach of their systems, you should consider changing your T-Mobile password and pin. Today’s post will go over how to change your password and pin on your T-Mobile account.
For those who may not have seen the earlier post Alert: Possible Data Breach T-Mobile, it seems a hacker has obtained the data of over 100 million people, from T-Mobile servers. The data in question includes
- Names
- Physical Addresses
- Social Security Numbers
- Phone Numbers
- Unique IMEI numbers
- Drivers License info
Sadly, data breaches are so common, that data from 100 million people (per what the hacker claims to have), doesn’t seem to have the same impact that it used to have. Once your data is breached and on the dark part of the web, there isn’t much you can do to get it back. However, there are a few steps you can take to try and protect yourself.
One of the 1st things to do, is change your log-in info on your T-Mobile account, and any other account you use that you share that log-in info on. Basically, how many other online accounts have the same user name and password as your T-Mobile account. You need to figure that out and you need to change your info on those accounts as well. However, that is step #2, lets start with step #1, which is changing your account info at T-Mobile.
Changing Your Info – T-Mobile
To change your info, log into your T-Mobile account, and from the homepage, click on Edit Profile Settings. If you don’t see Edit Profile Settings, click where it says My Account on the top right of the page, and then click on profile. Once you get to the profile page, you will see T-Mobile ID
Click that and on the next page you will get the options to change
- Name on account
- Email associated with the account
- Password on account
- Pin/passcode confirmation used with the account
- Primary phone associated with the account
From those options, you really should consider changing the email account associated with your T-Mobile account, password on the account, and Pin/passcode used with the account. In addition to the ability to change your account password info, on the same page, you can set up (and should set up) Two-Step Verication using an Authenticator app.
I know the page says Google Authenticator, but other Authenticators also work. Its very simple
- Click on Manage to the right side
- A QR code will appear
- Open your Authenticator app, and select add acct
- Scan QR code to add T-Mobile to your authenticator app.
- Turn on Always Require, so that you are prompted everything time you log in for authenticator app info.
Final Thought
With this latest breach from T-Mobile that includes IMEI information, someone with bad intentions could use that info to clone your phone. That means they would be able to see all the text messages you send and receive. If you have sites that you log in that send you text codes as part of the log-in, the bad guy could easily see your info. So it’s best, to try to secure your accounts using an authenticator app (Like Google Authenticator or Microsoft Authenticator). Lastly, with other breaches of this size, the affected company offered free credit monitoring to its user base. T-Mobile has not announced that yet, however, keep an eye out. Tech Geek and More will post the info if T-Mobile announces it.
