French telecommunications group Orange reported that hackers have stolen the personal data of 1.3m customers, in the second major breach that it has suffered since February.
In the latest incident, detected on 18 April, the hackers acquired names, email addresses, mobile and fixed line numbers, names of mobile and Internet operators and the dates of birth of existing and prospective customers.
“The data recovered could be used to contact those concerned by email, short message service (SMS) or by phone, particularly for phishing purposes,” Orange France warned in a statement.
In February, the group revealed that the personal data of 800,000 of its Internet clients had been stolen.
An Orange France spokesman said that the operator had delayed announcing the latest breach to allow for the scale of the data theft to be assessed and to ensure that the security gaps targeted by the hackers had been closed.
A similar instance of data theft within Europe’s telecommunications industry occurred last September, when Vodafone Germany revealed that it had fallen victim to a hacker who claimed to have stolen the personal data of 2m customers.