Technology
NewsOnScale Staff
October 11, 2026
Trump Mobile, the cell phone company launched by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump in June 2025, has been hacked, had customer data exposed on the dark web, and may have been operating without required federal authorizations — all while telling customers their data was safe.
The hacks
In May 2026, Trump Mobile confirmed that customer names, email addresses, mailing addresses, and phone numbers were publicly accessible online through a vulnerability in a third-party platform. The company said it was "evaluating whether to inform customers" about the exposure. It eventually did, after media pressure.
That was the first incident.
In September and October 2026, a ransomware group called BYOD obtained the personal records of 3,615 Trump Mobile subscribers — virtually the company's entire active customer base — and published them on the dark web. The exposed data includes names, email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses, and order histories. It also includes records of people who started but never completed signups, meaning Trump Mobile retained data on people who never became customers.
BYOD says it gained access by installing malware on the device of a Liberty Mobile employee. Liberty Mobile is the Florida-based mobile virtual network operator that actually powers Trump Mobile's network. Trump Mobile is a reseller with a gold phone, not a telecom company with its own infrastructure.
When BYOD contacted Trump Mobile about the breach, the company reportedly said it lacks a cybersecurity team and called BYOD's actions "terrorism."
As of October 5, the hackers still had access to Trump Mobile's backend dashboard.
The FCC problem
Senator Maggie Hassan sent a letter to Trump Mobile CEO Patrick O'Brien on October 8 raising a separate concern: Trump Mobile may never have filed required anti-scam registrations with the FCC, and may be operating international calling services without required federal authorization.
Mobile virtual network operators are required to register in the FCC's Robocall Mitigation Database and describe their customer verification procedures. A search found no such filing for Trump Mobile or its legal name, T1 Mobile LLC. The company advertises calls to more than 230 countries, but Hassan says the required FCC authorization for international calling could not be found either.
No FCC enforcement action has been announced.
What customers paid for
The Trump Mobile T1 phone, priced at $499, was revealed by media reviewers to be a rebranded HTC U24 Pro — a mid-range Android device available for significantly less without the gold branding. An estimated 600,000 people paid $100 deposits expecting shipment in August or September 2025. The claim that the device was "proudly designed and built in the United States" was later removed from the company's website.
The bottom line
A company with no cybersecurity team, no apparent FCC anti-scam registration, no international calling authorization, and a rebranded mid-range phone sold under a gold brand has been hacked twice, exposed the data of its entire customer base, and told the hackers who informed them of the breach that their actions were terrorism.
The president's sons built a phone company. It did not go well.
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