Deutsche Telekom is urging all of its customers to change their passwords effective immediately since discovering the account information for up to 120,000 customers has been sold on the black market. The email addresses and passwords T-Online customers use to access their online accounts were allegedly put up for sale by dozens of internet companies, and Telekom investigators have reason to believe the information is “at least partially real and current”.

At this time, it appears Telekom’s users have fallen victim to data phishing techniques, such as scammers posing as telecommunication representatives, to obtain the information directly from the source.

“Regularly changing passwords protects against abuse,” Thomas Kremer, Telekom’s head of data privacy, warns. “Now there is another reason to change passwords.”