Confirmed: T-Mobile's best-kept secret comes to light and it's really scary

In recent days, information that T-Mobile would have preferred to keep in the shadows has come to light. The content has caused concern among thousands of users across the country. Although it seemed like a closed matter, new details have revealed that the telecommunications giant dragged a serious security problem for years.

What is already known is generating fear among some customers who are wondering if they could be the next affected. The problem is related to a type of attack known as SIM swapping. It is a practice that has allowed cybercriminals to take control of phone lines for fraudulent purposes.

This type of attack is not new, and T-Mobile was aware of the risk since at least 2016. However, according to what has recently been learned, they did not implement enough measures to prevent it. In fact, the company had to compensate a customer with more than $26 million, although they tried to keep those details out of the public domain.

The case that worries T-Mobile

The most talked-about case has been that of Joseph Jones, a cryptocurrency expert who lost nearly $37 million after an attack in 2020. The hackers, one of whom was a minor, managed to control his phone number through a SIM swap. Once this was done, they began receiving all his messages, including verification codes to access his accounts.

Although T-Mobile detected the attack and reversed it in just 16 minutes, it was already too late: the funds had disappeared. According to legal documents, the company not only failed to prevent the attack, but also did not act properly in the following days. It was even discovered that the striker left a taunt inside the company's internal system, admitting to the theft of millions of dollars.

All this has come to light thanks to court documents that the operator tried to keep confidential. Between 2016 and 2020, at least 27,000 T-Mobile customers were victims of similar attacks, an alarming figure that now puts many on alert. Although the company had features to protect accounts, such as SIM blocking, these were only offered after the customer had already suffered an attack.

Another worrying fact is that T-Mobile, despite having more than 50 million customers, had only 100 employees in cyberattack prevention. This imbalance left many users in a vulnerable situation, something that cybercriminals were able to easily exploit.

Bad news for T-Mobile

Faced with pressure from authorities and court cases, T-Mobile has taken measures in recent years. For example, they temporarily deactivated the option to perform SIM swaps from the customer's account to prevent self-service attacks. However, that function was recently reactivated, which again raises doubts about whether the risk has completely disappeared.

Now that the details of the multimillion-dollar compensation by T-Mobile have come to light, many users fear that similar cases could be repeated. Although the company claims to have strengthened its security, distrust persists.