T-Mobile’s CEO offers mea culpa

T-Mobile’s CEO, Mike Sievert, penned an apology to customers over the operator’s recent hack.

“Attacks like this are on the rise and bad actors work day-in and day-out to find new avenues to attack our systems and exploit them,” Sievert wrote on the company’s website. “We spend lots of time and effort to try to stay a step ahead of them, but we didn’t live up to the expectations we have for ourselves to protect our customers. Knowing that we failed to prevent this exposure is one of the hardest parts of this event. On behalf of everyone at Team Magenta, I want to say we are truly sorry.”

The remorse is noteworthy considering T-Mobile’s “uncarrier” marketing position often involves direct, fiery attacks on its competitors. Sievert’s post Friday contained none of that.

Further, Sievert put the blame squarely on T-Mobile’s shoulders. “Keeping our customers’ data safe is a responsibility we take incredibly seriously and preventing this type of event from happening has always been a top priority of ours. Unfortunately, this time we were not successful,” he wrote.

That’s also noteworthy considering Sievert’s T-Mobile predecessor, former CEO John Legere, made sure to explain that it was T-Mobile’s credit vendor Experian that was at fault for a similar breach into the company’s customer data in 2015. “At T-Mobile, privacy and security is of utmost importance, so I will stay very close to this issue and I will do everything possible to continue to earn your trust every day,” Legere wrote at the time.

Six years later, Sievert offered a similar promise: “There is much work to do, and this will take time, and we remain committed to doing our best to ensure those who had information exposed feel informed, supported, and protected by T-Mobile.”