AT&T Data Breach and Passcodes Reset: What to Know

DALLAS — AT&T stated it has begun notifying thousands and thousands of consumers in regards to the theft of private knowledge lately found on-line.

The telecommunications big stated Saturday {that a} dataset discovered on the “darkish internet” comprises data corresponding to Social Safety numbers for about 7.6 million present AT&T account holders and 65.4 million former account holders.

The corporate stated it has already reset the passcodes of present customers and might be speaking with account holders whose delicate private data was compromised.

It isn’t recognized if the info “originated from AT&T or one among its distributors,” the corporate stated in a press release. The compromised knowledge is from 2019 or earlier and doesn’t seem to incorporate monetary data or name historical past, it stated. Along with passcodes and Social Safety numbers, it could embody e-mail and mailing addresses, telephone numbers and beginning dates.

It isn’t the primary disaster this yr for the Dallas-based firm. An outage in February briefly knocked out cellphone service for 1000’s of U.S. customers. AT&T on the time blamed the incident on a technical coding error, not a malicious assault.