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Personal Data Is Pirated From Russian Phone Files

It is a prime nightmare of the digital age: all of your personal information — credit card numbers, home address, Social Security number — stolen and passed around, or perhaps even posted on the Internet for anyone to see. Hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of customers of Mobile Telesystems, a Russian mobile phone company, have been discovering firsthand how that feels. The company acknowledged on Tuesday that it had suffered a huge security breach that led to pirated CD’s, purportedly containing its entire database of five million customers, appearing on the streets of Moscow. “We discovered it a few weeks ago,” said Yeva Prokofiyeva, a spokeswoman for the company, which is known as MTS. “It’s hard to determine where the leak came from. The measures to protect the database are very strict.” Full Story