Pedestrians pass AT&T store in New York, USA
Scott Mill | CNBC
AT&T announced on Saturday that it was investigating a data breach two weeks ago that published the data of millions of customers on the dark web, a part of the web that can only be accessed using special software.
The company has reset the passwords of 7.6 million affected current users and said it is actively contacting those customers as well as the 65.4 million former account holders whose data was also compromised.
“As of today, this incident has not had a significant impact on AT&T’s operations,” the company wrote in a news release Saturday.
AT&T’s preliminary review found that the leaked data dates from approximately 2019 or earlier and includes personal information such as names, home addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and Social Security numbers. This data set does not contain personal financial information or call records.
AT&T encourages users to set up fraud alert accounts and monitor their account activity and credit reports, and they will receive an email if they are affected. The company has not determined the source of the leak.
AT&T customers experienced hours-long talk times in February cellular outage, the company clarified that this was due to a system issue and not a cyber attack. The company’s chief executive, John Stankey, later apologized for the incident and offered customer credits to those affected.