Telus-owned Koodo has emailed select customers to notify them of a recent “security incident”, which saw customer account information leaked.

The Koodo email reads:

“On February 13, 2020, an unauthorized third party using compromised credentials accessed our systems and copied August/September 2017 data that included your mobility account number and telephone number. It is possible that the information exposed has changed since 2017, in which case your current information is not compromised.”

The response to this data breach? Koodo says:

“We acted quickly to prevent further unauthorized access. Some customers could have been at risk of unauthorized number porting, where a fraudster could use the compromised information to gain control of a customers phone number by moving it to another carrier. This would mean that the fraudster would receive your calls and texts. To prevent this we have applied port protection on your account. Port protection is a feature that prevents the porting of your number to another carrier unless you call us first. If you’d like to have this feature removed, please contact us.”

The email also recommends Koodo customers “not register your mobile telephone number on online accounts. If you have done so, you may want to remove it and use an alternative method to receive One Time Passcodes or 2 Factor Authentication codes.” This is easier said than done for some services that can only send 2FA codes via text message.

“We are taking this matter very seriously. We remain committed to protecting your privacy. We sincerely regret any inconvenience or concern this may cause and look forward to continuing to serve you in the future,” concludes the email.

The email is signed off by Telus executive, Jim Senko, President of Mobility Solutions.







Koodo customers started receiving these emails this evening. Some questioned whether they were real or not, but the Koodo Community Forums confirmed they were legitimate, by saying:

Hey! Thank you for sharing the details. Unfortunately it’s a valid communication and the investigation is ongoing still. We are aware of it and we are doing our best to prevent any inconvenience going forward. If you have any security concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us anytime. You can call us directly at 1-866-995-6636, as mentioned in the e-mail, or by sending a PM here: m.me/Koodo

We’ve reached out to Telus and Koodo for further comment and will update this post accordingly. Did you receive this email from Koodo?

Update March 6, 2020: A Telus spokesperson sent iPhone in Canada the following statement regarding the breach:

“Our investigation has determined that some archived customer data from 2017 has been accessed by an unauthorized user. We are proactively reaching out to impacted customers and offering them enhanced security safeguards such as telephone port protection. As soon as we discovered the incident, we took immediate steps to protect our customers and are continuing to monitor the dark web. Additionally, we have notified law enforcement and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, and will continue our own internal investigation.”