Back in July of 2021 dozens of T-Mobile customers, ( mostly Android users) reported through social media sites that the T-mobile app was continuously crashing.

I myself started to experience this issue a little over a week ago. Every 2 seconds I would get a giant notification across my phone screen. This made using the phone unbearable. Even the simple task of sending a text message took minutes .

This was odd to me because I’ve never seen a T-Mobile app in my app menu or in my settings menu. I figured it was a system app since my phone service is with Metro by T-Mobile. After some digging I found the app and noticed it couldn’t be uninstalled. So I took to the web for answers.

For this particular issue, T-Mobile recommends a few solutions. One being clearing the cache and restarting the phone. Many Reddit users recommended the same.

A few reported that they were told to completely wipe their phone. Some reported success using this method and some didn’t. I tried clearing my cache and uninstalling updates but none of it worked.

Out of options, I decided to just disable the app. I wasn’t sure if it would affect how my phone operated and if I would still be able to receive call and messages.

Disabling the app fixed my issue plus my phone still operates the same. But this issue brought a question to mind that I initially thought when this problem began. Is my phone tapped? Seems conspiratorial but when i heard of the recent data breach it somewhat makes sense.

T-Mobile confirmed on Monday that they are currently investigating a post on a forum that claimed to be selling the personal data of more than 100 million people swiped from T-Mobile’s servers. 

T-Mobile said in a release, “We have not yet determined that there is any personal customer data involved,” We are confident that the entry point used to gain access has been closed, and we are continuing our deep technical review of the situation across our systems to identify the nature of any data that was illegally accessed.”

The hackers are reportedly asking for a ransom of 6 bitcoin or $277,000. I’m pretty sure this type of data breach didn’t happen over night. Could the breach began back July 2020 when this issue first began?