By The newspaper
The telephone company AT&T confirmed in a statement that it began notifying millions of customers about the theft of personal data recently discovered online. It is not yet known whether the data in those fields originated from AT&T or one of its providers.
The Dallas, Texas-based company said a data set found on what it called the “dark web” contains information such as personal numbers, such as Social Security numbers, for about 7.6 million current customers with AT&T accounts and of 65.4 million former account holders.
The company investigates with cybersecurity experts
“AT&T has initiated a robust investigation supported by internal and external cybersecurity experts. “Based on our preliminary analysis, the data set appears to be from 2019 or earlier,” they wrote in a statement.
In the same letter they confirmed that they have already reset the passwords of current users and will contact account holders whose confidential personal information was compromised.
“The company is proactively communicating with those affected and will provide credit monitoring at our expense where appropriate. We encourage current and former customers with questions to visit http://www.att.com/accountsafety for more information,” they advised.
Personal data such as phone numbers, dates of birth and more
In addition to the passwords and Social Security numbers that were compromised, more personal data such as email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth may also be included.
“To date, this incident has not had a material impact on AT&T’s operations,” they specified in the statement.
Massive outage in February
In February 2024, AT&T was affected by a massive service interruption in the United States, affecting millions of customers.
The company apologized for what happened and said it had restored wireless service to all affected customers later, according to a statement.
“Keeping our customers connected remains our top priority, and we are taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future,” the company said on February 22.
AT&T has about 100,000 million users in the United States who need the service every day to stay in touch. In addition to almost 2.5 million companies, which are also in continuous communication.
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