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Bell Canada Canucks it up again: Second hack in just eight months

Subscriber database plundered by miscreants once again

Executives at Bell Canada have been left with faces redder than their nation's flag – after their subscriber database was hacked for the second time in eight months.

In May 2017, 1.9 million customer records were stolen from Canada's largest telco after its anti-hacking defenses failed. Now the biz has admitted miscreants have struck again and made off with the personal information of 100,000 punters.

"We apologize to our customers and are contacting all those affected," spokesman Mark Langton told the Globe and Mail. "There is an active Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigation of the incident and Bell has notified appropriate government agencies including the Office of the Privacy Commissioner."

Langton said the attackers got away with the names and email addresses of subscribers, along with some phone numbers, and account user names and numbers. It does not appear, at this point, that credit card data was nicked, but investigations are continuing.

"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 Office of the Privacy Commissioner's spokeswoman Tobi Cohen.

Given Bell's preeminent position in Canada, and the fact that it's pulling in over CAN$5bn a quarter, you'd think that that some money could be invested in security. It seems not. ®

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