AT&T reported that personal data from 73 million accounts were leaked into the dark web after breaches that allegedly started in 2019 or earlier.
The leaked data were said to be harvested from 65.4 million former customers and 7.6 million current account holders.
AT&T Admits Data Breach, Notifies Users
The U.S. wireless carrier shared that the company has started to notify millions of affected customers about the data breach, especially those whose sensitive information was compromised. The company also detailed that the passcodes of current users have already been reset.
According to AT&T, the compromised data was scrapped in 2019 or earlier. Most leaked data include email, mailing addresses, phone numbers, birthdates, passcodes, and Social Security numbers. Meanwhile, financial information and call history did not appear to be included in the leaked information.
"The company is communicating proactively with those impacted and will be offering credit monitoring at our expense where applicable," the company wrote.
AT&T Continues Investigation on Data Breach
Reports showed that scraped data began surfacing the dark web only two weeks ago. The data breach is reportedly similar to the same situation that happened in 2021, a breach that AT&T never acknowledged.
As of writing, the company has shared that the source of the data is still being investigated. The company has yet to find out if the data "originated from AT&T or one of its vendors."
Affected AT&T customers should have received an email or letter directly from the company detailing the incident. The letters and emails have started rolling out since Saturday.
Last February, AT&T reported a sudden outage which caused a nationwide panic to most of its users. The company has then pledged to give $5 to affected customers.
Related Article : AT&T Resolves Sudden Outage, Authorities Investigate
