Bouygues Telecom, the third-largest phone carrier in France, has confirmed a cyberattack and data breach affecting millions of its customers.
In a statement, the telecommunications giant revealed that hackers accessed personal information from 6.4 million customer accounts. The company detected the cyberattack on August 4 but did not specify when the breach was fully resolved.
The stolen data includes customers’ contact details, contractual information, civil status (or company data for professional subscribers), and international bank account numbers (IBANs). Bouygues Telecom currently serves approximately 26.9 million mobile customers.
The company has reported the incident to France’s data protection agency, CNIL. At the time of reporting, Bouygues had hidden a webpage about the cyberattack from search engines by using a “noindex” tag in its source code, making it difficult for the public to find the information. A company spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment regarding the attack or the hidden webpage.
This breach follows a recent cyberattack on Orange, France’s largest phone carrier and one of the world’s biggest telecommunications companies. On July 29, Orange warned customers of potential service disruptions as it worked to isolate affected systems. Orange serves over 290 million customers globally.