Verizon responds to report: Confirms
no loss or ti'lefl: of customer information

 

As a media outlet recently reported, an employee or one oi our vendors put iniormation into a
cloud storage area and incorrectly set the storage to allow external access. We have been able
to coniirm that the only access to the cloud storage area by a person other than Verizon or its
vendor was a researcher who brought this issue to our attention. Inotherwords,memhasbosnnoloss
orMoiVorizon orVerizon customeriniomtaiion.

By way oi background. the vendor was supporting an approved initiative to help us improve a
residential and small business wireline seli-service call center portal and required certain data
ior the project. The overwhelming maiority oi iniormation in the data set had no external value.
although there was a limited amount oi personal iniormation included. and in particular. there
were no Social Security numbers or Verizon voice recordings in the cloud storage area.

To iurther clariiy, the data supports a wireline portal and only includes a limited number oi cell
phone numbers ior customer contact purposes. in addition, to the extent Ple were included in the
data set. the Ple are used to authenticate a customer calling our wireline call oenter. but do not
provide online access to customer accounts. Finally. the number or subscriber accounts included in
the media report is overstated.

Verizon is committed to the security and privacy or our customers. We regret the incident and
apologize to our customers.