Dutch phone giant Odido says millions of customers affected by data breach

Dutch telecom provider Odido has confirmed a data breach affecting millions of customers.

In a statement released Thursday, Odido said unknown attackers accessed the company’s customer contact system and quietly downloaded large volumes of customer data. An Odido spokesperson told Dutch media the incident involves more than 6.2 million customers — roughly a third of the Netherlands’ population.

Odido said the information taken includes customers’ names, phone numbers, postal addresses, email addresses, dates of birth, bank account numbers (IBAN), and details from government-issued identification documents, such as passport or driver’s license numbers and their validity dates.

The company also warned that former customers who used its services in the past two years may be affected.

Odido said the compromised dataset does not contain customer call logs, location information, billing details, or image scans of government IDs. The company added that business customers are not affected.

The incident impacts customers of both Odido and its subsidiary Ben NL. Both companies said the breach did not disrupt their phone, internet, or television services.

The disclosure is the latest in a growing pattern of data theft targeting telecom and phone providers in recent years, as both state-linked actors and financially motivated criminals pursue the sensitive and highly valuable customer data that telcos hold.

Earlier this week, Singapore’s government confirmed that a China-linked hacking group had previously infiltrated four of the country’s largest telecom operators as part of a surveillance effort. However, officials said customer personal data was not accessed.

At the same time, hackers tied to the China-backed threat group known as Salt Typhoon have compromised hundreds of telecom companies worldwide — including targets in Canada, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States — in an ongoing espionage campaign focused on monitoring senior government officials and diplomats.