AT&T Had a Big Data Breach for “Nearly All” Customers

There’s a chance you’ll receive notification from AT&T in the near future to let you know that they had a big data breach. The scale of the data stolen is quite large, as it affects “nearly all” customers, both landline and wireless.

Here’s what you need to know.

In April of this year, AT&T said it learned that customer data was illegally downloaded on a third-party cloud platform. That data included records of calls and texts for cellular customers, customers of their MVNO operators, and landline folks “who interacted with those cellular numbers.” The records are from a time period of May 1, 2022 through October 31, 2022, as well as January 2, 2023.

According to AT&T, the data does not contain the content of calls or texts, personal information (like Social Security numbers, dates of birth, etc.), or time stamps. It does have names, though, but AT&T wants you to know that that information is often publicly available anyway, which is odd. AT&T also does not believe that the stolen data is publicly available.

So what’s happening now? AT&T says they are working with law enforcement to go after the people responsible for the data breach and that they’ve secured the access point used.

How do you know if you were affected? Well, “nearly all” customers means that you likely were if you were a customer of AT&T during the dates we mentioned above. AT&T will also contact you if you were affected by text, email, and US mail.

For more information, AT&T has setup a portal to help answer your questions and offer points of contact. You can access that site here.

// AT&T