Millions of AT&T customers recently received notifications about a data breach that exposed personal information, including Social Security numbers. The company took swift action after being alerted by Techcrunch about a leak posted on the dark web. Following an investigation with internal and external cybersecurity experts, AT&T found that approximately 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders were impacted.
The leaked data includes encrypted passcodes and Social Security numbers, among other personal information such as full names, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, AT&T account numbers, and passcodes. Customers are advised to take immediate action by resetting their passwords and setting up fraud alerts with credit bureaus to protect themselves from potential identity theft.
This data breach comes just months after a widespread cellular service outage in February that AT&T attributed to a software update issue rather than a cyberattack. However, authorities like the FBI and Department of Homeland Security are now looking into the root cause of the outage to determine whether it was related to the data breach.
In response to the incident, AT&T has offered affected customers a $5 credit for the inconvenience caused by the service disruption. The company is also reaching out to customers to provide assistance in monitoring their credit reports for any suspicious activity related to the leak.
