Telecommunications company AT&T announced Saturday that a recent data breach exposed personal information, including Social Security numbers, of 73 million current and former customers on the dark web. tech crunch report.
company press release He explained that the sensitive data was published online about two weeks ago.
“While AT&T has made this decision, it is still unclear whether the data in these areas comes from AT&T or its vendors. Balance of datasets that include personal information such as Social Security numbers “The source of the data is still being evaluated,” the company said.
AT&T has begun an investigation into this incident with the assistance of internal and external cybersecurity experts.
“Based on our preliminary analysis, this dataset appears to date back to 2019 or earlier, impacting approximately 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and approximately 65.4 million former account holders.” AT&T added.
After TechCrunch notified the company about the data breach, the carrier reset the passcodes for millions of affected accounts, the news outlet reported. passcode Typically a 4-digit PIN used as an additional layer of security.
AT&T has found no evidence that the data breach was the result of unauthorized access. Additionally, we do not believe that the confidential information leaked includes personal financial data or call history.
“Information varies by customer and account, but may have included name, email address, mailing address, phone number, Social Security number, date of birth, AT&T account number, and passcode,” the newspaper said. reported.
AT&T said it will contact affected customers by email and mail and provide free identity theft and credit monitoring services. Customers were encouraged to set up a fraud alert through the national credit reporting agencies.
“As of today, this incident has not had a material impact on AT&T’s operations,” the company said Saturday.
In 2021, hackers claimed to have stolen 73 million customer records, but AT&T denied any data breach. According to a report by TechCrunch, the allegedly stolen information was published on a cybercrime forum in March. Subsequently, some customers confirmed that their sensitive data had been compromised.
Last year, AT&T admitted that the information of 9 million customers was hacked by one of its vendors. fox business report. The data breach included customer-specific network information such as name, account number, phone number, and email address.
A company spokesperson said at the time, “Even a small percentage of affected customers had their rate plan name, past due amount, monthly payment amount, and various monthly charges and usage hours exposed.” ” he said. That information was several years old. ”
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