AT&T Sends Out Emails To Millions Of People Whose Data Was Stolen

(CTN News) – A major data leak has been reported by AT&T to current and older customers, including emails and password resets to prevent unauthorized access to accounts.

According to a recent statement from AT&T, the company had determined that data specific to included in a data set released on the dark web. Despite AT&T’s determination, it is not yet known whether the data in these fields originated from AT&T or one of its vendors.

Regarding the remainder of the data set, including personal information such as social security numbers, the source of the data is still being determined.

Our preliminary analysis indicates that the data set is from 2019 or earlier, and affects approximately 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and 65.4 million former account holders. There is no evidence that systems have been accessed without authorization resulting in data theft.”

In this statement, it is confirmed that some legitimate customer data is included in the data recently posted on the Dark Web for sale.

However, AT&T maintains that the data was not accessed from its systems.

In spite of the company’s insistence that the leak was not caused by a security flaw in its systems, it should be noted that an investigation is still in progress.

Despite AT&T’s adamancy that its systems are not at fault, the company has offered complimentary identity theft and credit monitoring services for those whose personal information has been compromised.

As recently as May, AT&T had a major outage that affected more than 70,000 users, so this is not the first time the company has been in the news.

In the event that their personal information has been compromised, customers can take several steps, such as changing their passwords and enabling two-factor authentication on their accounts.

Also, it has been recommended that customers freeze their credit, which prevents major credit reporting agencies from disclosing information necessary to establish new lines of credit. As a final precaution, it is recommended not to click on links in emails purporting to be from AT&T without first authenticating them.

It is becoming increasingly common for large amounts of data to be leaked due to improved hacking techniques. Identifying where the leak originated is important, since it could provide insight into whether there is a problem with the AT&T system that needs to be addressed. As of now, we are only able to wait until the official report has been completed.

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