Bell Canada on Monday said that an unknown hacker managed to access customer information on nearly 2 million customers, including email addresses, customer names and/or telephone numbers.
The company said that approximately 1.9 million active email addresses and approximately 1,700 names and active phone numbers were accessed illegally in the attack.
There is no indication that any financial, password or other sensitive personal information was accessed, a statement read.
The telco said the incident is not connected to the recent global WannaCry ransomware attacks, and believes there is “minimal risk involved for those affected” by the situation.
While Bell Canada dismissed the data stolen by hackers as having minimal risk, having access to customer lists opens the opportunity for targeted phishing attacks to customers who expect communications from the company. Being able to send a targeted phishing message to a customer and personally address them by name will certainly result in a much higher success rate than a typical blind spamming campaign would yield.
The company said it has been working with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police cybercrime unit on the investigation and has informed the Office of the Privacy Commissioner.
