Comcast says 230,000 customers affected by debt collection data breach

Comcast is warning that hackers stole the private knowledge of greater than 230,000 clients throughout a ransomware assault on a third-party debt collector, according to a court filing. The unhealthy actors focused a Pennsylvania-based debt assortment company referred to as Monetary Enterprise and Client Options (FBCS.)

The assault occurred again in February, however Comcast claims that FBCS initially mentioned that the incident didn’t contain any buyer knowledge. FBCS modified its tune by July, when it notified Comcast that buyer data had been compromised, according to reporting by TechCrunch.

All instructed, 237,703 subscribers had been impacted by the breach. The attackers had been thorough, scooping up names, addresses, Social Safety numbers, dates of start, Comcast account numbers and ID numbers. Comcast says the stolen knowledge belongs to clients who signed up with the corporate “round 2021.” It additionally says it has stopped utilizing FBCS for the needs of debt assortment.

“From February 14 and February 26, 2024, an unauthorized social gathering gained entry to FBCS’s pc community and a few of its computer systems,” the submitting states. “Throughout this time, the unauthorized social gathering downloaded knowledge from FBCS techniques and encrypted some techniques as a part of a ransomware assault.”

No group has stepped ahead to assert credit score for the incident. FBCS has solely referred to the attacker as an “unauthorized actor.” The debt assortment company was hit exhausting by this assault, with Comcast clients being only one group of victims. The corporate says greater than 4 million folks had been impacted and that the cybercriminals accessed medical claims and medical health insurance data, along with normal identification knowledge.

To that finish, medical debt-purchasing firm CF Medical confirmed that 600,000 of its clients had been concerned within the breach. Truist Financial institution additionally confirmed it was affected by the attack.

It’s notable that this incident primarily impacts debtors, opening them as much as potential scams. Chris Hauk, shopper privateness advocate at Pixel Privacy, instructed Engadget that “the unhealthy actors that get their paws on this data might use it to pose as debt aid businesses, which many flip to as a means out of their state of affairs, that means lots of the concerned debtors could also be defrauded out of huge sums of cash, one thing they will ill-afford.”

In different phrases, maintain a watch out for suspicious telephone calls, emails and texts. That is good recommendation for anybody, and never simply debtors who had knowledge saved with FBCS. In spite of everything, it was revealed that hackers stole more than 2.7 billion records from American shoppers earlier this yr, which seemingly contains knowledge on everybody who lives within the nation.