Bell Canada suffers a data breach for the second time in less than a year

Bell Canada is notifying customers about a data breach that exposed personal data of roughly 100,000 individuals, this is the second security breach in a few months.

Bell Canada is notifying customers about a data breach that exposed personal data of roughly 100,000 individuals, including names, phone numbers, email addresses, usernames and account numbers.

“The protection of consumer and corporate information is of primary importance to Bell,” John Watson, Executive Vice-President of Customer Experience at Bell Canada, told customers. “We work closely with the RCMP and other law enforcement agencies, government bodies and the broader technology industry to combat the growth of cyber crimes.”

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has launched an investigation into the security breach at Bell Canada.

“We are following up with Bell to obtain information regarding what took place and what they are doing to mitigate the situation, and to determine follow up actions,” said the federal privacy watchdog’s spokeswoman Tobi Cohen.  

Bell company added that there is no evidence that financial data (i.e. credit card data) has been compromised.

This the second time that Bell Canada has been a victim of a data breach, in May 2017 an anonymous hacker obtained access to about 1.9 million active email addresses and about 1,700 customer names and active phone numbers.

As part of the incident response procedure, Bell confirmed to have implemented additional security measures, for accounts’ authentication.

Bell Canada advised users to monitor their financial and online accounts for unauthorized activity and recommends customers to use strong passwords and frequently change them.

The Canadian Government plans to review the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act that would require companies to notify data breaches.

Unfortunately, until now only the province Alberta has mandatory reporting requirements for private-sector companies that suffer a data breach.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – Bell Canada, data breach)

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