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In 2017, a vendor working on a Verizon customer-service project left a cloud storage area configured for external access. Verizon said approximately 6 million unique customers were represented in the data; contemporaneous coverage attributed a higher estimate—up to 14 million U.S. customers—to security firm UpGuard. The event was a data exposure, not a confirmed outside intrusion, and the public record does not identify every affected customer.
What happened in the Verizon data exposure?
Verizon said an employee of a vendor placed project information in a cloud storage area and configured it incorrectly, allowing external access. The vendor was supporting an approved effort to improve a self-service call-center portal for residential and small-business wireline customers. Verizon’s customer community described the storage as an unsecured Amazon Web Services Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket controlled by NICE Systems.
UpGuard notified Verizon on June 13, 2017, and the bucket was secured on June 22, according to Verizon’s community page and Wisconsin’s breach archive. Verizon said the only person outside the company and vendor that it could confirm had accessed the storage was the researcher who reported the issue. That is Verizon’s account of confirmed access; it does not establish that access by anyone else was impossible.
How many customers were affected?
The estimates differ and should not be treated as equivalent verified counts.
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| Attribution | Reported scope | What the figure means |
|---|---|---|
| Verizon, July 2017 | Approximately 6 million unique customers | Verizon’s stated count; the company said the media figure was overstated. |
| UpGuard, as reported by Healthcare IT News on July 13, 2017 | As many as 14 million U.S. customers | An outside estimate cited in contemporaneous coverage, not Verizon’s confirmed count. |
The public information cited here does not provide a list that lets an individual determine whether their records were included.
What information was exposed?
Verizon’s community page described logs and information associated with customer-service calls. The records could include names, addresses, phone numbers, account information, and, in some cases, PINs used to verify callers contacting Verizon’s phone-based customer-service teams.
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Verizon said those PINs were for authentication with its wireline call center and did not provide access to online accounts. The company also said there were no Social Security numbers or Verizon voice recordings in the storage area. It characterized most of the dataset as having no external value and said only a limited amount of personal information was present.
What should a Verizon customer do?
Wisconsin’s consumer-protection breach archive advised potentially affected customers to update their PIN and avoid reusing a PIN. That remains sensible account-verification hygiene if you used a Verizon call-center PIN at the time or are unsure whether you did.
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- Use a new, unique PIN for phone-based account verification.
- Do not reuse that PIN for another service or account.
- If you need to know your current account status, contact Verizon through its official support channels; the public incident descriptions do not establish an individual customer’s status.
The cited incident records concern the 2017 exposure. They do not establish present-day compromise connected to that event or show that any particular customer’s information was misused.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What Verizon said
In its July 12, 2017 statement, Verizon said: “We regret the incident and apologize to our customers.” The statement did not name an individual speaker.
Quick Recap
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Sources
- Verizon Communications statement, republished by Telecom Ramblings, July 12, 2017
- Verizon Community: “Did Verizon expose me in Verizon Breach?”
- Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection: Data Breach Archive
- Healthcare IT News, July 13, 2017
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