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Verizon’s Visible might have been hacked, customers charged thousands for iPhones

By Cosmin Vasile

Updated: Oct 18, 2021, 12:44 PM

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Update: We have received an official statement from Visible regarding the issues that many customers experienced last week. You can read it below:

"Visible is aware of an issue in which some member accounts were accessed and/or charged without their authorization. As soon as we were made aware of the issue, we immediately initiated a review and started deploying tools to mitigate the issue and enable additional controls to further protect our customers.

Our investigation indicates that threat actors were able to access username/passwords from outside sources, and exploit that information to login to Visible accounts. If you use your Visible username and password across multiple accounts, including your bank or other financial accounts, we recommend updating your username/password with those services.

Protecting customer information -- including securing customer accounts -- is critically important to our company and our customers. As a reminder, our company will never call and ask for your password, secret questions or account PINs. If you feel your account has been compromised, please reach out to us via chat at visible.com."

Original: When it comes to privacy, it feels like nothing in this world is secure enough. After the massive T-Mobile data breach, it looks like another US carrier has been hacked, and although it’s a much smaller one, it proves that the lesson hasn’t been learned.

Visible, the cellphone service operated by Verizon, seems to have been subjected to a data breach. Although no official statements have been released yet, a Visible employee confirmed the security issue on Reddit and recommended customers to change their passwords and any other personal info they may deem necessary.

The MVNO discovered that the information on a small number of member accounts was changed without their authorization. According to the post on Reddit, Visible doesn’t believe that its systems have been compromised, but that you should change your account password just in case.

We don't believe that any Visible systems have been breached or compromised, nor that this unauthorized access to your Visible account is ongoing. However, for your protection, we recommend you review your account contact information and change your password and security questions to your Visible account. We also recommend that you review any other accounts that share the same email, login, or password, and make any changes you determine necessary to secure those accounts.

Unfortunately, a many Visible customers have taken to Reddit to complain that they can’t change any of their personal information because the carrier seems to have taken away that option, possibly in order to prevent malicious third parties from doing that.

Visible customers who have been hacked were charged thousands for phones that are to be delivered to other addresses. Although Visible might not be wrong claiming that its databases have not been compromised due to a hack, it’s quite possible that those who fraudulently accessed the accounts may have used usernames and passwords retrieved from other data breaches.

It’s hard to say what really happened, so we’ll just have to wait for Visible’s statement. If you’re a Visible customer, it looks like there’s really nothing you can do since the MVNO disabled the options to reset passwords and change the payment method.

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Cosmin, a tech journalist with a career spanning over a decade, brought a wealth of experience to PhoneArena. His expertise lies in brands like Samsung and Nokia, and he has a keen interest in innovative technologies. After a brief stint in PR, Cosmin returned to tech journalism in 2016, committed to delivering clear and objective news. When he's not writing or appearing as a guest on TV and radio shows, Cosmin enjoys playing RPGs, watching Netflix, and nurturing his passion for history and travel.