Bell (2017 breach) Data Breach

What happened?

In May 2017, the Bell telecommunications company in Canada suffered a data breach resulting in the exposure of millions of customer records. The data was consequently leaked online with a message from the attacker stating that they were "releasing a significant portion of Bell.ca's data due to the fact that they have failed to cooperate with us" and included a threat to leak more. The impacted data included over 2 million unique email addresses and 153k survey results dating back to 2011 and 2012. There were also 162 Bell employee records with more comprehensive personal data including names, phone numbers and plain text "passcodes". Bell suffered another breach in 2014 which exposed 40k records.

When did it happen?

The breach date in the public record is May 15, 2017. The record was added to the catalogue on May 16, 2017 and last updated there on May 16, 2017.

What information was reported as exposed?

• Email addresses
• Geographic locations
• IP addresses
• Job titles
• Names
• Passwords
• Phone numbers
• Spoken languages
• Survey results
• Usernames

These are incident-level categories. The record does not prove that every category was exposed for every affected person.

Who may be affected?

This record may be relevant to people who had an account or other relationship with Bell (2017 breach) or used bell.ca around May 15, 2017. A catalogue entry does not establish that every customer was affected or that every listed data category applied to each person. Compare the record with an official notice addressed to you.

What should you do?

Choose actions that match the information involved. If you find signs that someone is using your identity, the Federal Trade Commission provides a personal recovery plan at IdentityTheft.gov.