AT&T said it has begun notifying millions of customers about personal data theft recently discovered online.
The telecom giant announced Saturday that a dataset found on the “dark web” includes social security numbers and other information for about 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and 65.4 million former account holders. .
The company said it has already reset passcodes for current users and plans to contact account holders whose sensitive personal information was compromised.
The company said in a statement that it was unclear whether the data “originated from AT&T or one of its vendors,” and that the compromised data does not appear to date back to 2019 or earlier and does not include financial information or call history. Stated. This may include your passcode, social security number, email address, mailing address, phone number, and date of birth.
The data, which surfaced on hacking forums about two weeks ago, is very similar to a similar data breach that surfaced in 2021 but was not acknowledged by AT&T, said cybersecurity researcher Troy Hunt.
“If they evaluate this, make the wrong decision, and fail to notify affected customers for years, the company could soon face a class action lawsuit,” founder Hunt said. It's expensive,” he said. An Australian-based website that warns people if their personal information has been compromised.
An AT&T spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday.
This is not the first crisis this year for the Dallas-based company. The February outage temporarily disrupted cell phone service for thousands of U.S. users. At the time, AT&T said the incident was due to a technical coding error rather than a malicious attack.
